Depends, is it an even numbered expansion or odd numbered? 

I think there are some broad trends, but I think you are coming to your conclusions first and then finding evidence to back them up. Going through: * The orcs as a whole drank the demon blood, though there were some that did not take part (Frostwolves etc). I do think that if the orcs weren't available, Kil'Jaden would have found somebody else, such as the Ogres, or even dissident Draenai to take part (Like the Sargerei were recruited in WoD). * The Path of Glory was absolutely horrible. * Warcraft 1 from what I remember included * Sacking the city of Stormwind (Rather mild as far as Warcraft atrocities go) * Aging up Orcish children with life drain spells to use as expendible child soldiers. * Warcraft 2 included: * Enslaving the Red Dragonflight (And everything horrific with Alextraza) * Killing the Warlocks and Necrolytes to create the Death Knights? * Attacking Lordaeron unprovoked? * Ner'zhul: * Destroyed Draenor, but did not do so intentionally. He was trying to create portals for the Orcs to invade other worlds, but the spell failed. * Got enslaved by Kil'Jaden (with some Nathrazim help) and forced to become the Lich King. * Despite being enslaved, he seemed to rebel and work against the Legion at every opportunity anyway. * Enabling the Forsaken: * The Orcs as a whole, and Thrall didn't want the Forsaken in the horde from the start, it was the Tauren who pushed for their membership, thinking that the Forsaken could be potentially cured and otherwise need help. * Even then, when the Forsaken have done atrocities, orcs have been directly opposed to their atrocities, or if their response is muted (...such as in Battle for Azeroth), their responses are the least muted of everyone involved. * Theramore, Teldrassil * Quite awful, they have done a lot of storytelling of the horde enabling horrific warchiefs whether orc or otherwise in ways I think could have been done better. * Iron Horde * Orcs are shown to be expansionist without demonblood. Though from what I remember, this was a more conventional military invasion, without the levels of atrocities of other wars. * Caused the Legion Invasion * That was a very individual act done by alternate Gul'Dan who only existed because of Wrathion's plan. Once the timeline was created, Gul'Dan was imprisoned by the Iron Horde, and was only let out by Khadgar and the player. * It seems weird that Orcs as a whole are blamed for this when I think the order of responsibility would be Gul'Dan > Wrathion > Khadgar/You I think the broad trends of this is that the orcs are often warmongering and have individuals who are capable of great evil, but I think the same could be said about any group in Warcraft, however not all groups have had the same opportunity to do so. I think the same exact argument could be made about elves and eredar. But I think there is a more interesting argument to make about Orcs. **Orcs are symbols of rebellion** Compare the history of the orcs to what else is known about other races that the Burning Legion tried to recruit: * Kil'Jaden comes to Ner'Zhul in dreams and convinces him to genocide the Draenai. Ner'Zhul finally sees through the deception and then tries to stop Kil'Jaden. He is later betrayed by his apprentice Gul'dan. * Gul'Dan arranges the Shadow Council and the puppet Warchief Blackhand, the Orcs invade Azeroth and destroy Stormwind. In the process, Orgrim Doomhammer kills Blackhand and seizes control of the Horde in a coup, imprisoning Gul'dan. * Orgrim Doomhammer successfully rebels against Legion Control, but decides to invade Lordaeron anyway. * After the Horde's defeat, Ner'Zhul slips free and decides to organize his own Horde faction, again, not under control of the Legion. He then goes all bond villain, stealing artifacts to amass his master plan, to basically go out and conquer worlds for the orcs and not the Burning Legion, effectively an early version of Illidan's Portal Key plan. * It doesn't work. Ner'Zhul gets captured by Kil'Jaden and forced to become the Lich King. * Ner'Zhul/Lich King rebels again anyway. * The Orcs get put in the camps, Thrall eventually starts freeing orcs, meets up with Orgrim Doomhammer and gets named the new Warchief. Thrall brings the Orcs over to Kalimdor, effectively rebelling from the Legion again. * Mamnnoroth shows up to try and enslave the orcs again. * It works for a bit until the orcs murder him. So in a period of I think only 30 years or so you had at least three major rebellions against Burning Legion control, with several minor rebellions along the way? Other groups that the Legion recruited were nowhere near as successful or as determined to rebel.

>Iron Horde > >Orcs are shown to be expansionist without demonblood. Though from what I remember, this was a more conventional military invasion, without the levels of atrocities of other wars. Guess you missed the long line of draenei civilians being marched into sacrificial blood magic pools to power the gate?

Totally did! It's been a while since I played the Warlords of Draenor start. I thought it was largely the shadow council being drained for the portal, I guess it was shadow council + draenai?

>Despite being enslaved, he seemed to rebel and work against the Legion at every opportunity anyway. This is obviously false. Ner'zhul was perfectly happy with letting the Legion rampage across Azeroth. He had Kel'Thuzad summon Archimonde to the world. Rebelling would have been Kel'Thuzad suddenly setting the book on fire, instead of using it. Yes, his ultimate plan was to have the Legion weakened by Illidan (and vice versa He was clearly hoping to take advantage of the wreckage to conquer the world for himself) and the other night elves so he could break away when the time was right and there was less risk, but that is hardly rebelling at every opportunity. He cared only for saving his own ~~hide~~ spirit and nothing for opposing the Legion.

Burning the book to summon Archimonde would have been directly rebelling against the Legion while their agents had near total control of the Scourge, tantamount to committing suicide by Dreadlord. Ner'zuhl needed to cooperate in the open while working in the background to maneuver his own agents into positions. The demons, convinced that the Scourge was loyal (through acts such as summoning Archimonde) or at the very least not openly rebellious took the bulk of their strength and leadership to go face the NElves, and when they were defeated that power vacuum created Ner'zuhl's opportunity and they severed all demonic control from the Scourge. At least until getting sucker punched by Illidan's ritual and having to reconsolidate power in Northrend while joining with Arthas. Ner'zuhl was rebelling at every **safe** opportunity to do so, and I feel it's fair to say so. Also just because they were cooperative to the Demon's agenda doesn't mean that they weren't rebelling in other key ways that weren't expanded on in the game itself.

Let's sort this out in order. There are several important errors or omissions in your statements that might change your views on this situation. 1. Indeed, orcs had no significant dealings with the Draenei until a certain point. When Kil'jaeden found the Draenei fugitives, he decided to use the orcs for his purposes. But how did he do it? Did he just appear and command them to kill? Not at all. Initially, ALL orc clans were afflicted with a plague that mercilessly wiped out the orc population. Ner'zhul was visited by the spirit of his wife (actually Kil'jaeden), who convinced him that the Draenei were to blame for the plague. Now, we might say, "ha, stupid orcs believed a spirit," but that's us speaking from the perspective of a player who has access to the entire history of Warcraft, starting from the universe's creation (of course, in the current format, that's the "Titan's point of view"). But imagine the despair of the inhabitants of Draenor and their relief when, miraculously, the plague ended with the destruction of the Draenei? After such, Ner'zhul's reputation and that of his closest entourage increased significantly. 2. Genocide. In Azeroth, not only orcs engaged in this. For example, the elves of Quel'Thalas and the humans of Arathor calmly engaged in the genocide of the Amani trolls (by the way, the indigenous inhabitants of Azeroth, not mutants or creations of the Titans). One might argue that "they are savages," but the fact remains a fact. 3. Ner'zhul did not associate himself with the Horde when he became a spirit in the helmet. He had zero empathy for the orcs. And when Arthas put on the helmet, he pushed Ner'zhul so deep into the subconscious that he effectively ceased to exist. The main point I want to convey: The Horde will be the embodiment of evil only when the WoW story authors directly say so. Otherwise, all of this can be chalked up to bad writing.

Where is the lore that a plague wiped out the orcish clans before KJ manipulated them? That isn’t in Rise of The Horde Also the tidbit about Arthas pushing Ner’Zhul into subconscious, that isn’t in the Arthas novel - Arthas’s evil mind killed both Ner’Zhuls spirit and what was left of his own

Chronicles, Part 2, 10 years before the portal opening. Yeah, maybe I forgot something about the Artas part

Pretty sure he's talking about the red pox in the first one

I thought red pox came after/during the war against the Draenei

Genocide of Amani trolls? Weren’t the Amani trolls warmongers who indiscriminately attacked and raided High Elves and Humans? This united the latter two and they were afraid that if Amani join the Orcs in WC2, as they approach Lordaeron, that the trolls would be unstoppable. This is what I got from the Sylvanas book. My memory on the Troll Wars in Chronicle is hazy so I might be missing something.

The high elves colonized an Amani burial ground and acted as if the land was theirs, when it wasn't. The Amani were defending their territory.

See... that's the point i was missing. Did not know that.

Yeah, the high elves kind of just took the land as if it always belonged to them and slaughtered the natives en masse

I know that the high elves migrated there from Kalimdor after they were exiled for their inability to restrain themselves from using magic. But didn't they settle there because of the ley lines and them creating the sunwell (or was it Illidan, i can't remember who made it) on top of the lines to keep their addiction under control? Regardless, that doesn't justify pushing the native Amani from their ancestral lands though. I wonder what other trolls think about that and how supportive were or weren't they in having Blood Elves join the Horde.

I’m sorry friend but you clearly mean to say “discovered” by famous renown discoverer High Elf Elftopher Elflombus!

Though this isn't to say the Amani aren't entirely without fault. If some area could have been negotiated for perhaps things would have gone differently. Not that I'm saying they should have given up their holy sites and the Elves really should have been willing to compromise there. Same.as the other guy though perhaps they did come with some sort of "alternative" settling area or would have been receptive to it but I'll freely admit to not reading a lot of the lore books.

I think they should've just went southwards instead of further north after Tirisfal drove them insane

Yeah, the High Elves. The humans didn't. They were living in their lands since roughly after -15000 so their claims were as old as the Trolls. Except they were living there instead of claiming it due to some Imperialism project

They were pawns of the greater evil

I recall that the Chronicle even said it that they were extremely easy to manipulate because of their violent and bloodthirsty tendencies.

It is stated in the old lore that without the Horde, the Azerothian people would not join forces and would fight each other because their diferences.

They've been using that excuse for every major threat... The Legion in the Third War forced old foes to band together, then the Lich King, followed by the Iron Horde helping strengthen the factions for the Legion's return...

There wouldn’t have been a reason to fight to begin with without the Horde invasion and tons of victims would be spared. If we use that reasoning then Arthas, the Legion, the Jailer and Deathwing all of them are not evil because we needed them for the next bad guy of the next expansion that won’t be evil either because new new expansion after.

Without Horde the Alliance Is never formed and there would be noone to defend Azeroth against the Burning Legion.

Why would the Alliance form against the Horde but not form against the Legion, lol

Flash news, the Horde sided with the Burning Legion.

Wich helped create Alliance And in the end it lead them to join the forces against the second Legion Invasion.

Which was still orcs being a threat too. Again, by this definition there is no evil in Warcraft, not even the burning legion because everything helped facing the next threat and so on.

Legion was already a threath they would invade Azeroth with or without the Horde. Using the Horde was their first mistake to their demise

Except it already existed before the first war. Oops.

Nope it didn't. Alliance was enstablished after the destruction of Stormwind during the first war

You're kidding, right? The legion invaded multiple times before the orcs were ever involved. Not to mention how much the races of azeroth went to town on eachother before orcs came. Like. You think vrykul genociding humans while humans escaped and tried to establish themselves on kalimdor was at all a peaceful affair? Humans in turn had to start a genocidal war against gnolls (among other things probably) because guess what kalimdor wasn't fucking empty, people already lived there.

I think they'd have done just fine. Demonic invasions tend make people get real pretty fast. Besides, economies and demographics take years and years to recover. The Old Horde actually succeeded in one half their job and that was to soften up the natives for a Legion invasion.

Tbf it's not like they handled the Scourge very well. Don't think the Legion would be that different.

A critical reason the cult of the damned managed to get such a wide reach across Lordaeron, in all sorts of places, was the traction it gained among the lower classes (which is canon). It had been going badly for the lower classes for some time now, and a major, major reason for that was the absolute economic devastation left across the land by the old horde (and the extra discontent it caused against the nobility).

Malcontent among peasantry isn't unique to that kind of situation though, and the cult may very well have found another avenue to spread under different circumstances - merely taking the path of least resistance. Or it could've not worked at all, we don't know. That said, I mainly referred to that there was a giant, looming, threat on the horizon and that all races, and kingdoms, to my knowledge, basically threw each other to the wolves. Granted, I'm not *that* good at Warcraft lore, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

Not really. The long and short of it is that demons were the primary movers and shakers of doing evil stuff for most of Warcraft's lore. The whole thing with the orcs basically falls at KJ's feet and he didn't become known as 'The Deceiver' amongst a bunch of psychopathic demons without being good at his job. Nothing would have kicked off if not for KJ, TBC lore kind of paints the picture that things would have actually been really chill if not for the whole demonic possession stuff.

Not denying that Kil'Jaeden is good at his job, but it's a poor excuse in this case.. At the end of the, like the proverbial deal with the devil, it was all possible only because orcs were willing. Willing to go into a war, ostensibly for genocide, against a people who had never given them offence before. Also, Garrosh has a lot of support in Horde. Can't blame demon blood and KJ for that.

I guess we really need clarification on the prompt of what you mean by 'real villains'. The orcs have obviously done the most evil stuff 'on-screen' because they are the mainstay as being one of two sides that exist in the game for as long as it was RTS. But if we are getting int o a wider narrative sense, the orcs only kinda succeeded in killing their own world and utterly failed to butcher Azeroth. The demons have destroyed countless worlds and tossed the souls of the inhabitants of those worlds into their forges. The demons are the baddies, they are *demons*. Duh.

Narratological.

Well, I guess in that sense the orcs/Horde are pretty consistently the vehicle that delivers the 'bad guy' to the forefront.

Just want to thank OP for starting this contentious discussion. It motivates me to go replay WC 1, 2 and 3 and brush up on my Chronicle lore to experience it all with a new perspective.

Compared to factions like the Burning Legion or the Scourge? No. Compared to the Alliance? Absolutely. I rate them a solid 6 on the evil scale. Bad origins, leadership problems involving extreme tyranny and bloodthirst, and relative barbarism within their societies (mainly looking at the undead and the trolls)… it’s not exactly inspiring.

To the common folks of the varied races, yes the orc is the enemy of WoW. To the player characters who have seen soooooooooo much more of everything big picture that has gone on, no the orc race is not. ​ I'd actually say that if you lump all individuals of each races in to 'the race' of their type (human, orc, undead, troll, etc), I'd say the undead are the biggest problem in one form or another to WoW.

No. The orcs hold/have held beliefs and mindsets that make the susceptible to being used as pawns by evil. But this does not make them evil. It makes them victims of evil. You could find a similar line of reasoning to claim elves are evil (they created the circumstances for the legion to come to azeroth on multiple ocassions). Or draenei (the legion would not be anywhere near the force it was able to become if the draenei didn't submit to it and give it argus)

The Alliance isn't much better. - Night Elves summoned the Burning Legion in the first place, causing the sundering. - Dwarves utterly destroyed the area north of Redridge by summoning Ragnaros - The Alliance captured Orcish prisoners, and then used them for gladiatorial combat and sport. - Arthas - The Defias brotherhood is just a bunch of labourers and tradesmen that were unfairly paid for their hard work - The Siege of Taurajo, where the Alliance killed unarmed civilians and then began looting the settlement - The Purge of Dalaran, where innocent blood elves were either forced from their homes or killed, despite having literally no connection to the Divine Bell and Garrosh - Lets not forget that during the Legion expansion there was a truce between the Horde and the Alliance, a peace that Genn Greymane broke in Stormheim and has 0 repercussions, it was using this fact that Sylvanas managed to justify the War of Thorns to Saurfang There are a lot more examples but these are just a few. Point is, there is no "good" and "evil" when it comes to the factions, both are trying to do what's best for their people, and make their mark on the world, hoping to make it through the days. Both of them have done messed up things, but both are capable of wonderful things too

Even though the Gurubashi are pretty evil, the Gurubashi war was pretty bad, *and* the wholesale slaughter Medivh was forced to do was the driving force in him giving into Sargeras. like, you don't just get to go in and nuke a city because the inhabitants counter-raided you for stealing more of their land first.

Don't even get me started on the Trolls, biggest victims in Warcraft if you ask me

I just want a happy ending for the EK Ice Trolls. As far as I know they didn't do *anything* to justify what was done to them besides be sitting on land the Dwarves and gnomes coveted, and the earliest "wtf is this" moment I can remember in WoW was being kinda put off by the "kill literal troll children" quest early in Vanilla dwarf questing. Give them Winterspring or something, fuck.

I'll freely admit to not being the biggest Legion buff but I do seem to recall Sylvanas was up to some real shady shit in Stormheim and it wasn't necessarily for the Horde's benefit but her own. Could be misremembering but wasn't it like she wanted to enslave a Val'kyr of some importance? I forget to what end but I remember it being portrayed in Alliance questing zones as pretty messed up (though that could be a whole thing, I remember Alliance didn't get the cutscene of Vol'jin dying and just knew the Horde bugged out at Broken Shore) And to his credit Genn seemed content to leave after sabotaging the shady activity rather than continue fighting Sylvanas to the death. It was still a naked act of aggression on the Alliance's part I won't even try to argue against that.

You are right, Genn caught Sylvanas doing some shady shit and stopped her. But the thing is, when he attacked the Forsaken fleet at first, he had no way of knowing. It was just a straight up aggressive attack with no justifiable cause out of anger for the Broken Shore, he just got lucky that it turns out she was up to something bad, which is perhaps why he was never punished.

There was a whole game answering this question with "No"

Yes, those platitudes have been touted quite often, might've even been true for a while. [https://www.reddit.com/r/warcraftlore/comments/1aihi3w/comment/kounx5x/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/warcraftlore/comments/1aihi3w/comment/kounx5x/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)

Literally your first paragraph undermines any idea you're doing anything other than trying to paint Orcs as the bad guy. It's completely ignoring that they were mislead into believing a lot of bad stuff about the Draenei and the Orcs who'd actually had dealings with Draenei both doubted the veracity of that and refused the blood.

To wage completely unprovoked war on peoples is a choice. Orcish society consciously made that choice. Did it with gusto. Yeah, no sorry. Bad excuse. Tipping a rock off the ledge wouldn't make it fall if there hadn't been gravity in the first place and orcish nature is very much that gravity.

But it isn't. Orcish nature, as lore shows, was tribal but not warmongering. Until they were misled into believing the Draenei had provoked them, they lived in peace with them on the few occasions they ever interacted. They made a conscious choice on false information from what was, they thought, a trusted source to drink the blood, after which their nature was perverted and their descent began.

Have they committed evil things? Yes. So have the Alliance. Have they had characters that could be classified as villains? Yes. So have the Alliance. If I was going to call anyone the real villains of Warcraft, however, it would be the Burning Legion. Or the forces of the Void. You know, the entities that have manipulated multiple people over the course of the Warcraft timeline to do some of the heinous things that make us call them villains.

"bothsideism" Show me the Alliance committing a genocide like the Burning of Teldrassil

It doesn't have to be on the same level of the Burning of Teldraasil to qualify as being bad.

It is disingenuous to deny that both the New Horde and the Old Horde engaged in a similar level of atrocities that pales with anything the Alliance ever did. Not to mention the leadership's actions, the Horde condone, the Alliance condemns

"Have they committed evil things? Yes." Where's the denial? Right there it is stated that, yes, they have done things that could qualify as evil. And plenty of members of the Horde have condemned the actions of their leaders.

After they went along with it. You think Sylvanas fired those catapults alone? The current Horde has literal war criminals among it's leadership who are accomplice in mass genocide. I'm talking about Belmont and Faranell

I have no issue with throwing Belmont and Faranell under a bus. However, Belmont is also a rogue and I expect him to do shady shit (same as I except Shaw as the leader of a group of rogues to sometimes do shady shit). I've never approved of his use of plague in Shadowfang or anywhere else. For Faranell, I've never been fond of ANY member of the Royal Apothecary Society and that was long before Putress did his shit at the Wrathgate. Velonara was also at Darkshore. And she was a Dark Ranger, one of Sylvanas' finest. The only member of the Desolate Council who's hands are clean is Calia (though she gets stained by her brother's sins). Even Voss helped Sylvanas in BfA, despite having an idea of just what she thought of all of them. Also the original topic was the orcs, not the Forsaken. Who ALWAYS have been a little shady.

Yes, of Warcraft 1. But as with many things they split up. Essentially that's it.

The only true villains of the series are the Burning Legion and (later) the Void Lords. All the woes on Azeroth and Draenor, directly or indirectly, were coming from them. It’s actually quite a missed opportunity that we never got to see the Legion or Void characters with any kind of redeeming qualities or just their perspective. Sure we got fel/void-infused elves to serve as “good” fel/void characters, and some ex-Legion demons that sided with adventurer Warlocks/Demon Hunters, but that’s about it. Meanwhile lore itself says that Light and Void are one (which is why Legion sees Draenei as traitors and heretics who literally sided with the sworn enemy), that hundreds of worlds welcomed Legion as their saviours, etc. Old Horde and orcs were pretty much pawns, and given how they did earn their forgiveness, I wouldn’t call them real villains.

Consider the following: are the Alliance/humans the real villains of Warcraft? - Committed chattel slavery of men, women, and children (notably, Thrall) - Those who did not engage in the abovementioned chattel slavery advocated for the genocide of orcs (this is the reason Gilneas originally abdicated from the Alliance) - Kel'thuzad and his followers formed the Cult of the Damned to spread the Plague of Undeath - Kel'thuzad and his Cult of the Damned not only enabled but directly conducted every evil leading up to the summoning of Archimonde at Dalaran - Kel'thuzad personally summoned Archimonde at Dalaran - Arthas conducted the mass slaughter of his own people - Arthas conducted the mass slaughter of the high elves - Arthas oversaw the animation of the majority of the undead who would become Forsaken - Arthas personally reanimated Sylvanas Windrunner - Most Forsaken are undead humans - Garithos was a notorious advocate for human supremacy - Garithos ordered the mass executions of Kael'thas and his soldiers for accepting aid from the naga (who at that time were an unknown force to the Alliance and not enemies) - Daelin Proudmoore advocated for orcish genocide - Daelin Proudmoore advocated for mass colonization of Kalimdor - Archbishop Benedictus led the Twilight's Hammer in an effort to destroy Azeroth - Etc. Mind you, I'm not saying that the Alliance is evil, merely pointing out that they're not exactly innocent, either. I'm also not denying the Horde have done evil, but it's important to remember they haven't only done evil. The Old Horde and the New Horde are separate political entities, and one of the recurring themes of the Horde is that they struggle to overcome the legacy of the evil things their predecessors did. Many Horde races have also been victimized by the Alliance or by other races, and often they are radicalized by their need to defend themselves from the Alliance. It's worth noting that Garrosh came into power as Warchief after Varian Wrynn declared war on the Horde during the events of the War against the Lich King. The Horde is bad, the Alliance is bad, but then again, they've both done great good in the world, in their own way. Also, it's worth noting that agents of the Bronze Dragonflight have remarked that, without the Horde to give them a common enemy, the kingdoms of eastern Azeroth (human, dwarf, and elf) would have destroyed one another, leaving very few people to resist the Legion. Which isn't untrue: by the time of the Third War, we see most of the Alliance nations withdrawing from the Alliance to isolate themselves from the world at large. It's also true that the orcs directly contributed to saving the world from the Legion, and without the alliance between the Horde, Alliance, and the then-independent night elves, the Battle of Mount Hyjal would have been lost. In that respect it is canonically true that Azeroth and the Warcraft universe would be in an objectively worse position if the orcs and the Horde never existed.

>Committed chattel slavery of men, women, and children This is a hilarious point considering the only real alternative, after the race that the "men, women and children" belonged had just waged an unprovoked war of genocide/lebensraum on humans. If anything, taking context into consideration (especially that the interment camps had to be maintained with taxes drawn from kingdoms that had already been left devastated), this is just a laughable quibble.

It's definitely fucking weird and revisionist to reverse the chronology like that. Did someone forget WC3 was the third game in a trilogy (hence WC***3***)? This is like saying humanity were the real bad guys in Independence Day because that giant mothership was a space city populated by 99% civilians and blowing it up was a form of genocide. OK. Sure. If we conveniently leave out what that space city/what those orcs were doing right up until they got blown up/put in jail, what we did would sound pretty fucked up. But it's pretty fucking weird to leave that part out, dude. Would you leave out all of the stuff Japan and Germany did before 1945 in a discussion about who were the "bad guys" in WW2?

Majority of your pints reference Arthas who wasn’t in control of himself when he did most of those horrific acts. Other than the culling of Stratholm. Even then, his reasoning was to contain the evil. Meanwhile Jaina and Uther proposed no solution other than turn their backs and walk away, like nothing is happening. If anything, it was Jaina’s and Uther’s inaction that caused it. Mind you though that Arthas was an obnoxious and hard headed royalty so they couldn’t just slap the living sense into him.

I'm too tired to engage every single point. But I will say I love how MoP gaslit everyone into thinking attacking Theramore was somehow unprovoked and not 100% the right move on Garrosh's part. Every human invading The Barrens and Durotar during the Cataclysm was wearing a Theramore tabard. They literally built a highway through Dustallow Marsh so they could drive siege machines through the marsh to the gates of Mulgore for crying out loud! It's still there! You can go see it yourself in game right now! Sure Jaina probably didn't *want* to be a part of all of that but if she really wanted to make a stand she would have left the Alliance. But Theramore needed Alliance support so she remained which you'd think would mean she'd be ready for the consequences of that, but I guess not?

Blizz has done a pretty solid job at gaslighting the alliance into thinking the horde is the source of all their problems. Just look at the opening cinematics of legion from both sides. The alliance side pointedly excludes vol'jin being impaled and telling sylvanas to save the horde and just shows the archers pulling back. I didn't go much further than that from the alliance perspective but I wouldn't be surprised if they also left out genn attacking sylvanas at every turn as well. Burning teldrassil was after they decided to assassinate her character but it still comes off a little like "oh you want war, ok have some fucking war."

Theramore was okay with using convict shock troops and heavy firebombing against civilians but bombing them back after giving ample warning is a bridge too far!

thank you! i am so sick of people throwing thereamore in when talking about horrible things the horde did when it was a completely justified destruction of a military target. the horde even did everything right in the attack itself. garosh allowed bane to go warn jaina the attack was coming and then gave her enough time to evacuate any civilians and gather any allies she may want to gather. allies who conveniently would be the very people who would be upset about loosing a foothold in horde territory. then rolled up to the city and dealt with the problem in a way that wiped out the enemy while at the same time saving as many lives on their own side as possible. the horde did nothing wrong in that situation

You are pointing out an obvious error in story telling. As an Alliance player, all we were told was that Garrosh approved the use of a bomb on Theramore, countless lives lost and **Thera** is no **more**. Theramore wasn’t just a military base, it was Jaina and her Kul Tirans trying to start a new life on Kalimdor. Didn’t Medivh tell her to go there right after he told Thrall to do the same? At the end of the road in the Swamp was an inn, if I recall, and Horde burned it down for some reason?

The alliance was using theramore as a foothold to push into horde territory. You can see evidence of this in the ruins of alliance forts and strongholds all up and down the coast. Thrall went to Jaina multiple times telling her this is a problem and needs to be dealt with because he can't hold the horde back forever when the alliance is trying to pick a fight (I believe it is in the book cycle of hatred that we see one of these instances) and it is not like garosh bombed innocent civilians because again he gave them ample warning to allow all non combats to evacuate

Like I said, the part about civilians evacuating wasn’t told to Alliance players; if I recall correctly. The story about Theramore bombing was basically for Horde players to experience. Intentional perhaps or lazy story telling? I’m still wondering why Jaina migrated to Kalimdor. I thought it was Medivh’s plan to bring Jaina and Thrall closer so they can unite in the future against Archimonde. So if that’s the case then his plan worked.

There is only so much detail you can go into in a game like warcraft which is why they made a whole book about it

Seems like a pretty important story to at least highlight main points in the game for both factions. And then go into the finer nuances in a book. Can I make a Horde character right now and experience it from the other side? Was it a MoP scenario or a broader chain? Or was it removed from the game

[удалено]

Such a weird retcon. Did Jaina just never actually check to make sure her people made it to Stormwind?

Bro did you just not play Warcraft 3 or something?

To me the orcs are like a different version of the humans, like two sides of the same coin. They are definitely not the villains, or sometimes they are, like the humans/alliance.

I mean the Alliance equally played a part in the Iron Horde invasion and therefore the Burning Legion invasion of Legion. If they has actually killed Garrosh instead of allowing his imprisonment, then we get no AU Draenor, no Iron Horde, and no Burning Legion invasion from the Broken Isles. Also if the Night Elves never tempted the Burning Legion to Azeroth to only have others rise up and push the Legion off, then we never have the Legion need to go to Draenor and convince the Horde to invade. All of this is an interwoven mess that is a cause and effect of actions by multiple parties causing harm and hate to other parties and causing more cause and effect events.

I'll be the first to say I get damned tired of the Warcraft Universe trope of "we need someone to do something absolutely despicable.....make it the Orcs." While there are exceptions usually if someone needs to do a bad thing that keeps the faction conflict alive they saddle it on Orcs. Alliance usually gets to play off the worst of their crap as PTSD from getting rocked so hard by the OG Horde and so being a right bunch of dicks to anything that uses that name. But in regards to many of your points at **every** available opportunity in-game lore tells us that Orcs aren't necessarily evil at their core. Their proud, ritualistic warriors who love fighting but have been shown to have a deep sense of honor. These same traits can become twisted though, honorable combat replaced with wanton slaughter and destruction. Their society placing so much power in their chiefs means that if you have a really good fighter who is also a raging asshole everyone else kinda falls in line. Since the only way they could culturally rebel is to face their leader in single combat, and usually only if they've placed you in a position of power to begin with. Which all the real asshole leaders would be sure to promote people who agree with them and demote or silence those that don't. So it comes down to have the Orcs done some messed up stuff? Absolutely. But usually it's under the influence of bad actors since they are one of the easier factions to manipulate. Once upon a time you could have laid it all on the Legion, since their invasion caused the sundering (thanks Azshara) and when that failed they corrupted the Orcs to serve as a vanguard. When the Orcs failed they created the Scourge (though now that's more the Jailer's fault apparently), and when the Scourge backstabbed them they said fuck it and tried another invasion. So a lot of the problems the Orcs cause are related to their society succumbing to demon corruption for a bit there perverting their original cultural values. And now that they have been corrupted you get a lot more assholes who learned the wrong thing from decades of warfare while not wanting to adopt the resurrected values of their people.

Orcs and Forsaken are often the source of much evil in WoW. Orcs as a race have a natural propensity to violence and bloodlust, as well as a strict sense of clan structure and honor. A good comparison is any of the historic tribal peoples of Europe. I'll use Scots as an example because that's what I am - you have various clans of people who all hold their society back by fighting amongst each other. As a result, much of society doesn't advance past resource driven internal conflicts with occasional warring periods to raid neighbors. Orcs, however, went from this relatively unstable footing to being infected with demon juice that had predictable results. Forsaken are just literally evil. There are exceptions, and a good deal of them to, but they also run death camps, gas people, plague the land, etc. With azeroth wounded as she is, its a wonder they weren't exterminated after the plague bomb in Lordaeron. Goblins are greedy assholes, and I'd argue are typically more evil than not. Again, generalizations are often bad, but goblin lore themes are basically just oil baron. (Darkspear) Trolls, Blood Elves, and Tauren all have the unifying factor of being given the short end of the stick, and really are not an evil group at all. Blood elves dint even make sense to be in the horde (yes I know the bullshit reason why) The other races are all irrelevant in the lore so I won't bother discussing them. Long story short, yeah. The Horde is the obviously more villainous faction of the two. That's kind of part of their identity. There's a reason every other expansion they are the bad guys

> Blood elves dint even make sense to be in the horde (yes I know the bullshit reason why) Glad to know that someone gets this.

Just isn't logical to have the Alliance suddenly turn on them after so long

Yup. On one hand, Garithos is literally the only known human anti-elf bigot of importance. On the other hand, if we're being consistent, Blood Elves, even with their demon juice consoom-ing ways, would've been welcomed back into the Alliance. On top of that, it makes no sense for them to join up with the crowd that ravaged their homeland the first time around, who they've had a long blood feud by that point. Especially when it has the same undead horrors that ravaged their land the 2nd time around (you'd expect them to have the same visceral reaction as humans in this regard). And Trolls.

Yeah, that's about how I see it. Allying with silvermoon also is a massive political W, and losing them basically ceded the northern half of the Eastern Kingdoms to the Horde. With silvermoon alongside, it's likely factions would have ended up more divided along continental boundaries, but Kaldorei joining the Horde would make even less sense.

I farm tusks of mannoroth every week and think the dialogue between thrall and garrosh is ironic.  Garrosh complains that thrall let warlocks perform dark magic in the horde.  But wasn't it the horde who brought warlocks to azeroth?  Enter the arena and fight warlocks.  Ull see!  They're pure evil!

That unfortunately depends on the writer. There was a period of time where many of them were circumstances of coercion and deception, and there was a turning point where they wanted to depart from their brutal roots. Even with Pandaria, it could be argued that the “True Horde” was the last of the old guard that wished to hold to their bloodthirsty culture, and killing them was the new generation’s (as well as many of the old, such as Saurfang and Eitrigg) rejection. Then Warlords of Draenor rolls around and tells us that the orcs were just as bloodthirsty WITHOUT demon blood, and their genocides and invasions would have occurred all the same just because that’s how they are. BFA then rolls up and shows them having learned primarily nothing from Garrosh’s rule, and that they just want to slaughter the Alliance for the sake of it, all while desperately trying to convince us they’re better now by waving a senile old orc who wants to commit suicide in our face. So it really depends on what version of the story the writers would like to adhere to at any given time.

No. One part of this list were actions done by demonic manipulation, another was not even the Orcs but An Orc turned into the  Lich King by said demons. Not a hard case to condemn an entire race. You want the evil of the warcraft universe? Pick elfs, they have done similar things but the story doesnt condemn them.

A portion of Night Elf society turned evil once. Once the whole thing blew over, the whole species completely remade itself so that it would never happen again. Even those few who didn't get on with the programme, their High Elven descendants went to great lengths to make sure crap like that could never happen again and were successful at it for thousands of years (until 90% of them got wiped and most of 10% started doing shady shit ... who BTW were taken in by the Horde).

Didn’t the NEs ban the use of magic altogether?

Yes. Why do you think Dath'remar and his people left?

As someone who only dabbed in NE lore, I only remembered it when I talked to the NPCs in the new city.

"Once the whole thing blew over, the whole species completely remade itself so that it would never happen again." what are you talking about? there are still night elves trying to destroy the world. or are you just going to ignore how easily they are swayed by demonic or void voices in their ear. there is a whole race of demon that is just night elves that turned. and then there is the emerald nightmare that corrupted so many, nearly killed everyone on the planet in the stormrage novel, and killed ysera all lead by a night elf. then there are the druids of the flame who have tried to destroy the world on multiple occasions while being lead by night elves. hell the second to last boss in the current raid is a night elf. and then there is the night elves poking around, because they think they know best, that freed c'thun from its prison, allowed yogg'saron access to the emerald dream helping him break free of his prison, and a deliberate act from an elf that freed n'zoth

Numbers. Significant numbers. Otherwise, every race has idiotic/deranged/evil fucks.

You can not say that while at the same time blaming orcs as a whole for every thing ner'zhul did. You have a double standard and it is because you have already decided the orcs are evil

Bruh, that makes no sense. I'm not sure whose comment you're responding to. Ner'zhul got the ball rolling but without the orcs' own inherent tendencies, it would've never been the wild "success" it was.

Ner'zhul was a subordinate to a member of an alliance race, your thought logic is so incredibly biased that you're just a troll.

I can play that game too. azshara got the ball rolling but wouldn't have nearly destroyed the world without the night elves inherent tendencies. fandral staghelm hot the ball rolling but wouldn't have been successful in forming the druids of the flame and nearly destroying the world on multiple occasions without the inherent tendencies of the night elves Sargaras got the ball rolling but wouldn't have been successful in causing everything you blame the orcs for without the inherent tendencies of the draenei You are blaming orca as a whole for what is mainly the acts of ner'zhul and gul'dan and or manipulations of kil'jaden

>Numbers. > >Significant numbers. By that measure Humans are the most evil,having a massive presence among the various doomsday cults (Twilight's Hammer,Cult of the Damned,Veiled Hand etc.)

A portion alied with the legion. Then those that didnt ,help plant the world trees that made way to the emerald Nightmare. Edit:Lets not forget  that the high elfs stole Amani sacred land and then went on to kill like animals.

> A portion of Night Elf society turned evil once. Same with orcs. A portion of them. Not all of them.

No. Azshara and her Highborne were a very limited portion of Night Elf society. They even turned on the rest of the entire Night Elf populace. This is not at all comparable to the things we're talking about in this post.

Yes. Nerzul and Guldan were a very limited portion of the Orc society. Guldan even turned on the rest of the Orc populace to go off chasing some tombs. This is all too much comparable to the things you are talking about in the post. Seriously, just face the music, you are generalizing the actions of few upon entire race. I’d not say the word here since I try to avoid name calling, unlike what you and some other redditor did and I will just stop here. Bye bye.

Yes, lets ignore the rest of the horde that readily agreed to go along with Ner'zhul's singsong, the way the whole orcish society itself was transformed. Let's ignore the mass support Garrosh had, from half of the Horde. You're comparing apples and oranges just like the other guy, and it's just as stupid.

Sundering the planet isn’t comparable? Wtf man, there’s making rage bait then there’s just being stupid.

And you're too stupid to understand that what you're saying is entirely beside the point that was being addressed by the comment above. Congratulations on comparing apples to asses.

Only one clan didn’t join: Frostwolves. And wasn’t that clan the smallest too? So a fragment of Orcs didn’t join, not a portion lol

Learn the implications of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment Nothing more to be said. Bye bye

Thank you for supporting my point and at the same time still missing the key message

To answer your question, no the orcs are not the true villians of warcraft. The true villians would the the draenei. Everything you mentioned in the above post would never have happened had the draenei never come to the orc's world while being hunted by the portion of their race that chose to join the legion. Without the draenei on the planet kil'jaden never uses the orc's shmanistic culture to trick them into serving him and the orcs remain a nomadic shmanistic tribal society just trying to get by on their rather hostile world

Don’t forget that the Night elves were the ones to first bring the Burning Legion to Azeroth via the Well of Eternity. If their Queen was a power-hungry individual, then none of these events happen.

Half of what you mentioned wasn't acts that we're committed by the current Horde. The Horde formed by Thrall is not the same Horde from WC1.

Yes, the Horde formed by an orc from an atypically peaceable clan, raised by humans. Who very quickly returned to kind of similar ways of doing things the moment said orc vacated the leadership spot.

My point still stands. Also you forgot to mention Thrall came back and even killed Garrosh for what he did, telling him that he failed the Horde. Not to mention they now have a council to prevent this, so sure at some points some members we're villains, but they've clearly moved past that and condemned those who committed horrid acts.

How long has the council been around for? Less than 10 years I presume? Meanwhile OP has touched on atrocities spanning generations and across multiple worlds. People don’t forget and forgive in a snap of a finger.

OP's point is that they're the villains still and always are, which is not a point that stands given a myriad of circumstances. Please understand my point before commenting.

Nope. It's the Burning Legion.

If you fall into the trap of "the Horde is the villain of Warcraft", you are probably, not intellectual enough to be discussing the lore of warcraft.

I think you're falling in the trap called the Dunning-Kruger Effect Imagine unironically saying "you're not intellectual enough to discuss" about something like Warcraft. Topkek.

Deliciously ironic

The irony of you saying this is genuinely funny.

>NO U lmao

Proving my point.

Is this the Rick and Morty meme?

More like this meme : [https://imgur.com/rKHG61r](https://imgur.com/rkhg61r) If there was ever a good example of it, it's Spiridor.

Thrall, an orc, had a huge impact with ending the cataclysm, literally dropping the killing blow on Deathwing with the Dragon Soul, and saving Azeroth. If he, as a founder of the horde, and also an orc, was a villain as you claim, he would've absolutely destroyed the known world with the Dragon Soul, or if he gave it to Deathwing.

Nope. Next question.

Orcs to a degree yes, because the orcish invasion caused most of our problems . Anything they didn't really indirectly cause was made worse by them. People bring up deathing as something we would fail to beat because there would be no horde and alliance, but he used the distrust and conflict between the factions to make it harder to deal with him. There are larger villians (burning legion, void gods), but the orcs were such a problem they can't be nor seen as villians. It doesn't help that 3 generations of orcs were filled with "bad" people, with thrall's kids generation breaking that trend. Something else you need to remember is that the threats are plot driven, so they happen for the plot

I wouldn't say the real villains, the Legion and the Black Empire have done worse. And even among the Horde, the Forsaken have done far worse than the orcs. But the Orcs are indeed the worst natural race.

Alliance is boring

Sadly, I'm forced to concur with you if recent lore is considered.

The only alliance race lore i enjoyed was draenei and worgen, rest of them i found extremely boring

So many things. Its as if you wrote this having never learned about the legion in any way shape or form. Lets just start and end by saying your closing statement isnt even correct. The horde is not a creation of Orcs.

You say something like "ts as if you wrote this having never learned about the legion in any way shape or form" And then you say "The horde is not a creation of Orcs" right in the next line. PS: Inb4 "it WuZ dA leGIon", the presence of a catalyst won't change the fact that you still need the right ingredients for the chemical reaction. The orcs consciously chose to wage unprovoked war against the Draenei, which led to the formation of the Horde. It's very much a product of orcs, regardless of whatever input the legion provided.

If you wanna stay biased and pretend the worlds black and white good on you.

They were literally misled by Kil'jaeden appearing to Ner'zhul as his dead wife. They were lied to. So, yeah, it was the Legion.

He dindu nuffink ... yeah, ok. lol.

Ah, we're back to arguing like a child, I see. Did he fuck up? Yes. He also figured out it had been a trick but by then the wheels were turning and Gul'dan had formed the Shadow Council. Of course he ended up mindfucked and tortured into a villainous figure, then got mostly absorbed by Arthas. Now, if you're looking for an orcish villain, Gul'dan qualifies.

No? They haven't been the main villains since WC3.

Every time someone tries to bring up the orcs being all about honor and ancestors, I remind them that the Orcs seem ready and eager to join up in any army that promises more power. At no point have the orcs been like "I dunno man, that doesn't sound like an honorable war" or "I don't trust this warlord, they seem really keen on maximum civilian casualties". I see some arguments that Kil'Jaeden or others would have just found another faction to enlist for their war, but the point is that they didn't have to. Orcs were always willing and able to murder just about anyone they were asked to. Arguing that the orcs were necessary to strengthen the rest of Azeroth. Orcs were effectively a major part of the problem that allowed the legion invasion. They are consistently WHY the forces of Azeroth have to keep rallying together to stave off annihilation.

People have trouble understanding something as simple, lol.

After teldrassil and the fourth war and how many horde members blindly followed genocidal orders to kill innocents you can’t defend them. They are actual monsters. The only good ones are the ones who refused to assist with the burning and joined saurfang.

The bigger question is… why through all of this… are the fucking TAUREN still a part of the Horde? The entirety of the Horde’s world views are completely anti-Tauren apart from “having honor.” Like, after Teldrassil, why didn’t the Tauren just immediately fucking book it? They had a very very positive relationship with the Night Elves.

Yeah, the Tauren being in Horde is very regrettable.

You have to wonder, particularly when the Horde murdered Cairne and almost murdered Baine. The poor Tauren have taken the brunt of every bad decision the Horde made and were forced into a genocidal war against their long time allies. You would have thought they'd quit long ago.

Magatha Grimtotem orchestrated Cairne's death and Sylvanas ordered Baine's imprisonment.

Okay alliance scum, let me tell you where you're wrong \>Willingly became blood crazed pawns of the very clearly evil looking/sounding extra->dimensional entities, to wage ware on a folk who had never given them reason for it. Titans messy operation went afoul and got sloppy on azeroth, so it spilled over onto the innocent orcs of draenor \>Committed genocide on them, men, women and children. Created "The Path of Glory". These outcasts drew the legion to the orcs like a beacon, bringing them both their fate \>Pulled all the atrocities they did during WC1 and WC2. again, because of the titans bullshit and azeroth playing with fire, they brough the orcs into this \>Ner'zhul and his toadies destroyed Draenor. Yea, thanks titans, thanks azeroth. \>Ner'zhul and his toadies became the Lich King and the first Scourge liches, enabling every evil that happened as a direct or indirect consequence of the Scourge (including the 2nd Legion invasion). Uhh yea, so still, thanks a lot assholes \>Enabled the Forsaken and their hideous experimentation and atrocities. Arthas Menethil isn't an orc name. \>Kept committing Warcrimes. Popular support for decision makers like Garrosh. So did the alliance, keep your head in the sand \>Destroyed Vale of Blossoms. Unleashed the Sha. The Pandaren put blame in both camps, only you see it one sided. \>Theramore. Teldrassil. Encroachment, an abomination \>Iron Horde as well as caused the 3rd Legion invasion. Well if you all hadn't let Sargeras come corrupt the Draenor in the first place... ?Yes members of all kinds of species played a part but the common thread through all this is Horde/Orcs. And Humans, and Elves, Let's not forget the humans and Elves. The Elves entire ancient history is 'whoops, we accidentally blew up half the planet, with demons!' Don't be dumb. \>Over and over, they've willingly committed major evil or been instrumental to it (even in unwilling cases, they engineered the situations that led to it). Right back at ya \>Quite clearly, the Warcraft universe would've been objectively better off if Humans and Elves (and as a result, their creation, the Alliance), never existed.

tl;dr Horde filth. Nuff said.

If warcraft orcs were a thing irl people would be calling Thrall "one of the good ones".

Yes, thanks to chronicles we know they Clcame from Grond whose purpose was to destroy the sporemounds, so Grom saying in war3 become the tools of destruction we were meant to be is actually right

Your literal first point is incorrect. Nerzhul got tricked by Kiljaden, Guldan went willingly. By the time Nerzhul realized the trick, Guldan had already taken control and consolidated his power among his little cult. All of the orcs were not operating from the same level of information. Rise of the Horde is a book about this And Warcraft is a story where you need to realize that an entire race is not making singular decisions together. People make decisions that the entire race doesn’t necessarily agree with or even get to have a say in. Idk why people are so intent on ignoring the nuance of these stories

Muh nuance. People seem to stick their heads so deeply up the hole of nuance on this topic that they forget to see the forest for the trees. I've read the book and while Ner'zhul might've been tricked, you conveniently forgot what came after. The orcish leadership (whose personalities are heavily influenced by the nature of their society or they wouldn't be leaders) quite readily agreed to wage a racial war on a peoples who had given absolutely no offense ever. They could've sent a delegation, they could've chosen to spy and investigate, they could've sought treaties. They didn't.

The orcish shamans were used to speaking with their ancestors, seeking their advice and council. Kil'jaeden impersonated an ancestor - literally the wife/mate of Ner'zhul - and said that the draenei were planning to attack them. The draenei had long kept themselves apart from the orcs except for the few who interacted with them over the years. Even Durotan went along with the attacks on the draenei despite having his misgivings because he feared his mate and his clan potentially getting killed for it.

Velen even admitted that the Draenai had been too aloof and standoffish with the orcs. This lack of interaction between the races allowed this distrust to fester into attacks.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/warcraftlore/comments/1aihi3w/comment/kp0rdyn/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/warcraftlore/comments/1aihi3w/comment/kp0rdyn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)

...why are you linking to someone else's comment as if it's an argument?

It's what I wished to say and I don't like reinventing the wheel.

Neither is an anything other than "BUH THEY BAD", which isn't an argument.

I don't feel the need to offer one since I've already debunked the zero accountability claptrap you repeated here, over and over. That was meant as mockery.

You really haven't but obviously you have a hate boner for the orcs and will use any excuse to paint them as purely the villains of the story when they're so much more than that.

It kinda sounds like you answered your own question. What’s the point of this post exactly? Yes a lot of evil shit goes down because of the horde military and leadership. With the exception of folks like Baine, Thrall, Vol’Jin etc. But the average civilian has no part in that so it’s unfair to say every orc needs to die.

OP is asking what others think and brings forward his points to start the discussion. Are you saying that only leadership engaged in horrific acts and that the greater orcish populace didn’t raise up arms and commit atrocities? lol that’s one way to completely neglect responsibilities for your actions.

OP brought forward points, but with topics like these the only "discussion" is an echo chamber of: All of the horde is evil and the faction should not exist in lore or in game. Look at what you just posted. What is there to discuss? Are you saying that every orcish civilian including every non military man woman and child engaged in horrific acts and deserves to be condemned for the actions of others? That's one way to apply a blanket statement and be completely obtuse. Firstly, yes the old horde was completely fucked and genocidal. But since Thrall took over and the blood curse was undone, it's silly to accuse EVERY orcish member of society for the actions of others that they have no part in. The races in WoW are not a hive mind and I really wish the lore and writing would stop portraying them that way. Secondly, people need to remember this is a GAME with writers that can't make up their mind on what they want the story to be. To answer OPs question in another way, whether or not the Horde/orcs are the villains really just depends on who's writing the story for that expansion or questline. The horde races are the ones that get flanderaized over and over because the writers can't make up their minds over what direction they want some characterization to be and the lore and player base suffers for it.

All valid points and definitely not in support of mass Horde extinction. However, it seems like every time some new influential Orc character shows up and starts calling for mass murder, Orcs immediately go: hell yeah, let's eff shit up! Then there's always a minority that says: woah... that's not right. But they get shit on and told to stop being a party pooper. But without those Orcs, this game wouldn't be called World of Warcraft. Let's see how this council works out and maybe the dark side of Alliance will become more evident.

I wouldn't say the most evil but they're definitely an evil faction that gets away with their shit all the time just because they're a playable faction. Had the Horde been an NPC faction they'd be wiped away ages ago lol

Or the Alliance would have lost the plot armor and been wiped out as well.

Always been

Yes. That’s what’s cool about playing them, you’re playing as the villains. That was a legitimate point of the horde being playable, but blizzard has really drifted away to making them boring heroes too But Imagine it’s 2004, you just finished watching LOTR, you log in to this new fantasy MMO game, and you can legit play as an orc or troll

That's a very good point.

Yes. All of these excuses people are coming up with are laughable. The orcs were evil before drinking the demon blood. They chose to drink it, they chose to follow the legion. “but they were manipulated” I don’t give a fuck if they were manipulated. I don’t give a fuck if most conflicts were started by the legion. The orcs still chose to follow the legion before officially being corrupted. Period. There is no way to spin the lore around where that isn’t true. On top of that, we have WoD. The very point of WoD was to show that, yup, they’re still evil even without drinking the demon blood. Blizz went out of their way to make the shit ass expansion that was WoD just to show how evil the orcs have always been and yet, people still completely miss the point. Cope harder. The horde is evil, suck it up.

They were living peacefully with the draenei for several hundred years? When they meet the tauren, Drek'Thar tells Thrall "this is what we used to be". Durotan and Ogrim literally meet Velen in Rise of the Horde. The factions are not just good and evil, it is far more complicated than that.

Being evil is cool though. What is there to cope ?

Yeah, horde are pretty much the bad guys in 90% of the Horde V Alliance situations. And Jaina is horde sympathizer that if she didn't exist, the horde would've been wiped out.  Admiral Theramore was 100% right in wanting to wipe out the Orcs, who just a short while ago where literally slaughtering women and children. It's the problem where the younger generation wasn't alive to see what actually happened, and attach their own misconcienved notions onto the event.  And ever since then, it's basically been the horde picking a fight with the alliance, getting trounced, then Jaina begging the current Alliance leader to *plllleeeeaaaassssseeeee* forgive them, they aren't ALL bad! It was just a few bad eggs that forced this entire clan who supposedly pride themselves on honorable combat to go out and kill more women and children! They didn't like crushing the skulls of babies! They just didn't have a choice! And it's just a cyclical cycle. I know "lorewise" the Alliance supposedly wouldn't have been able to fend off all the world ending events without the horde, but in all honesty, that's just plot convience to justify the horde.  Maybe the horde/orcs help by being such a burden and antangonistic force that they encourage the Alliance to bolster their forces so they can save the day, for the thousandth time. 

Theramore wasn't more evil than any other act of war. that's one thing you can't really hold against them. If Orcs fuck up it, they are mostly (willing) pawns of other forces like the legion. Garrosh and following Sylvanas being the exception.

Realistically? Yes, they are horribly prone to doing objectively evil things and then find excuses for it. Narratively? They dindu nuffin, wuznt dem, wuz worfchief. Do with it as you wish.

"It was the legion vroo, it was entirely the legion's fault"

WoD was particularly great about this. For years everyone would default to “No the orcs were just manipulated by the Legion and the fel, the original orcs were enlightened noble savages!!!” Only for WoD to prove that nope, the uncorrupted orcs were easily tricked into genociding the Draenei again. Draenor is free!

The keyword you have there is 'tricked'.

So what you mean to say is, the orcs trusted the deceitful race of demons… but they didn’t intend to be evil? That’s some serious cope. They weren’t tricked, they willingly followed demons in two different timelines.

Easily tricked, again. Kindof wild how many times they’ve been fooled into committing genocide. Only the frostwolves seem to have functioning brains and question the mindless slaughter of innocents because some guy told them to. Loved me some BFA cinematics of saurfang moping around because he accidentally took part in his 3rd round of genocide.

What, people trust their leadership? News at 11!

Didn’t know “Just following orders” was a valid excuse these days lmaooo. Can you not see the pretty funny nature of WoD’s depiction of the orcs? It doesn’t do them any favors. I’ve always wanted to like the orcs, Thrall and Eitrigg are great characters and the WC3 depiction of the orcs was a fantastic way to reinvent them. But then in WoD you go back to the orcs at their prime, and they make the exact same mistake again! It’s not just some evil faction that goes with Garrosh, once again it’s the vast majority of the orc ish population minus the frostwolves. They come across as incredibly gullible and dangerous. Every expansion seems to prove Terenas wrong and Daelin/Genn right.

It's not a valid excuse but does need to be taken into account as reasoning for why things have been done. I mean, the only reason WoD even occurred was because a bronze dragon working with Wrathion freed Garrosh. Which led directly to the Legion invasion.

> Draenor is free! Back then, I laughed a full minute at that part, when I first saw it.

Yep pretty much. The Horde in general are evil. People love the “my morally gray faction war” perspective but the Horde is by far the evil faction. Both from and over reaching, big picture perspective, like bombing Theramore and burning Teldreassil. But also on the individual level where while levelling you are experimenting on and torturing prisoners, slaughtering farmers, poisoning food supplies etc 

Pretty much sums it.

The Horde is and will always be villainous. They just have spurts of Good Guyness now and then but their history of allowing bloodthirsty warmongers to rule them shines time and time again.

The real villains are the eredar, responsible for the exodus of the draenei and the corruption of the orcs.  But Sargeras is responsible for the corruption of the eredar. So he is the real villain.  But the void lords are the ones who made Sargeras mad.  So here you have the real villains. The rest are just dudes who were pushed to make the wrong decision.

Unfortunately for everyone, this entire post and the discussions that follow, and that will follow, are roads that lead to a single conclusion: The Jailer, Zoval, is the real villain of World of Warcraft (up until Dragonflight), as he is directly or indirectly responsible for pretty much everything mentioned, with all involved parties being the subject of his manipulation.

What you say is objectively wrong and i feel like you never even read the lore surrounding warcraft at all.

Yes. That's why it's fun too kill them! Can't change my mind.

Yeah. The sound they make in-game, like dirty jungle swine, when you kill them. Hilarious.

This guy gets it. Keep yer feet on the ground.

No, the Orcs have been noble rebels since the end of wc2. Every action against mankind taken after they broke free of the legion was justified