Tuesday, April 3, 2012

The Fate of the Horde: When Hellscream's Reach Exceeds His Grasp

I imagine I probably come off as being a little Alliance-biased, and I won't say it's entirely inaccurate. When I first started playing, I actually thought the Horde was profoundly unusual, and I actually think I liked it better than the Alliance then. There was one quest that really turned things around for me, though. In Icecrown, Horde players are sent to find out what happened to the army sent to invade the Lich King's domain. You discover that the Horde soldiers ambushed the Alliance while the humans were fighting the Scourge. As a result, both attacks on the much more important threat ultimately failed. This arrogance and idiocy is not called out by the general on Orgrim's Hammer, rather he seems proud. This rang false to me: the Horde was all about honor. How is attacking your enemy from behind while they are fighting your greater enemy remotely honorable? That was really the moment that swung my loyalty meter onto the blue side.

Under Thrall, the Orcs were far more interested in stability than conquest. One always got the impression that disputes with the Alliance were more of a Cold War style. Small skirmishes would erupt in key places (the Battlegrounds, actually,) but open war was not really going on. Even more surprising than the Orcs, the Undead were surprisingly sympathetic. Before Cataclysm, there were two primary threats you faced in the Undead starting zones: the Scourge and the Scarlet Crusade. It set up an interesting dynamic where the goal of most Forsaken was to return to some semblance of their lives as humans (their presence in Thunder Bluff is actually explicitly for that purpose - the Tauren are trying to help the Forsaken become living humans again.) Yet, beside their obvious horror at being transformed into such twisted forms, they have major obstacles on either side: the Scarlet Crusade had no interest in rehabilitating the Forsaken - they just wanted them wiped out. The Scourge was still the Scourge, as it had always been, and wanted to kill everyone and raise them to serve the Lich King.

Two very major things happened over the course of Wrath and Cataclysm to change the nature of the Horde.

The Wrathgate Incident in Northrend raised a lot of very difficult questions regarding the Forsaken. We always knew that the Forsaken were developing a new plague, but it was thought that the intended targets for said plague were the Scarlet Crusade and the Scourge. Sylvanas has plausible deniability on the whole Wrathgate situation - Varimathras' coup does seem to have been quite a shock to her, and yet at some point, Sylvanas and the Forsaken in general started acting a lot more like the apothecaries that Varimathras had turned. When he witnesses the raising of Gilnean resistance fighters as Forsaken, Garrosh does actually ask Sylvanas what difference there is between the Forsaken and the Scourge. After all, the whole point of the Forsaken (as I see it,) is that there is a place to go to be both undead and retain your freedom. There's no way in hell all the people raised by the Val'kyr in Silverpine and Western Plaguelands have decided - on their own accord - to join up with the Forsaken the moment they're raised. Lillian Voss is the only new Forsaken we see that doesn't seem to immediately sign up to serve the Banshee Queen, but I can't imagine she's the only one that exists. Sylvanas has kind of sold out in a way, and there needs to be a reckoning. I don't think we need to kill her, but we need her to hit rock bottom and see how badly she's screwed everything up. (You'd think getting shot in the head would be that moment, but for now it seems to have only strengthened her resolve.)

Actually, Garrosh's admonishment of Sylvanas was one of the more admirable things he's done (sexist epithet notwithstanding.) Predicting Garrosh's fate here would be redundant, though we do not know for a fact that he is going to die - he might be imprisoned, exiled, or if they really want to just give him a slap on the wrist, demoted. Still, his Warchiefdom (it's a word now) is going to end with a bang, and while I don't think it's necessarily going to be a total "Rah-rah, go Alliance!" moment that would make Horde players feel duped, I think the beginning of the end for Garrosh Hellscream involves a key Alliance figure.

We know that the centerpiece to the Mists of Pandaria pre-expansion event is going to be the siege, and ultimately the destruction of Theramore. Despite its Alliance affiliation, Theramore has historically enjoyed at the very least a mutual tolerance with Orgrimmar. Yet, at the same time, it is a definite strategic stronghold for the Alliance forces pushing into the heart of Horde territory.

Garrosh has a problem, which is that his entire philosophy is based on victory. Victory or death is a common thing for Orcs to say, but Garrosh has made the Horde embody that notion in a really fundamental way. Defeat is not tolerated. Now, on one hand, that can motivate people to perform better, and Garrosh, with his near-insane acts of battlefield chutzpah (like when he suggests that a twilight dragon removes itself from his airship) provides Horde warriors with an ideal to live up to, but on the other, it's not a very flexible philosophy that can adapt to less ideal situations.

Two big problems arise from this: One, his more pragmatic, tactically-minded allies (Tauren and Trolls, and Thrallist Orcs) are alienated in this "Might makes Right" society of his. The other, and this is the really big one, is that as soon as he loses a battle, everything is going to go to hell.

Garrosh is going to attack Theramore - a city-state that has tolerated the Horde just as much as the Horde has tolerated it - a country ruled by perhaps the most powerful mage in Azeroth. And he's going to fail to kill her. I expect that Theramore is going to be a really costly battle on both sides. Garrosh will have certainly weakened the Alliance's hold on southern Kalimdor in the short term, but if they write the story well, it's going to lose him his best troops.

With the formerly almost-neutral Jaina now on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, the Horde's going to start losing a battle here and there - they might not lose every battle, but the unstoppability seen throughout Cataclysm is going to be over. With their invincibility in doubt, Garrosh's biggest supporters are going to start questioning his rule. Most importantly, Garrosh is going to start questioning his rule.

And now we bring the Forsaken back into the picture. The central Horde really only has a significant presence in Kalimdor - the biggest area of Horde territory in Eastern Kingdoms is under the Forsaken. If Sylvanas ever wanted an opportunity to seize power, this would be it. Let's say she kicks the Kor'kron out - making a new deal, where the Warchief no longer gets to tell her what to do and has to deal with her as an equal - and just as Garrosh finally realizes he needs support from the Forsaken, Sylvanas is in the best position to just say "no."

So with his armies getting slaughtered, his own people beginning to rebel against him (Horde players would be included here - and the rebels are winning, so don't worry, Hordies still get to be winners,) his most powerful allies abandoning him, and one supremely pissed off woman who can shoot fire from her hands who wants him, personally, dead, what does he do? Garrosh does what his dad did. He grabs the biggest weapon he can get his hands on (for Grom, it was demon blood. For Garrosh? We don't know exactly yet, but if it isn't demon blood, it's something equally volatile and dangerous) and gives up everything the Horde stands for to try to save his own skin.

Ultimately, it won't be enough. Because we, the heroes of Azeroth, are going to take him down.

So what does a post-Garrosh Horde have to look forward to? That's a really good question. While some might think that we're going to see a combined Alliance-Horde force to unseat him, and that that might lead to some level of reconciliation, it could just as easily fan the flames of war higher. Sylvanas is still going to be a wild card, and unless she gets a wake-up call or dies, the Forsaken are going to continue to grow more Scourge-like as time goes on.

I don't think that there needs to be a "Alliance expansion, Horde expansion" kind of alternation, and I actually don't want to just see the Alliance winning all the time in Mists the way the Horde did in Cataclysm. Garrosh has undone a huge amount of progress made by Thrall. There's an interesting question to be raised: is the Horde destined to fall into bloodlust? Was a Warchief like Garrosh inevitable? But also, can the Horde find a cause to fight for that they can be proud of again?

We'll see how it goes.

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