One of the tricky things about making us take a darker view of a group of people who tend to be good guys is to strike a balance. In many darker works of fiction, we see good people put up against an extremely brutal antagonist and, in an effort to hold things together under such an assault, we see the good guys turn in on themselves out of fear and paranoia.
The situation in World of Warcraft is a bit different, though. The Horde as antagonists are a bit more complicated than some ominous, inscrutable evil. Half the game's players (theoretically if not in fact) see things from the Horde side of things, and they aren't just mindless monsters bent on destruction.
The potential in WoW is to set up two sides who are on equal ethical footing, but despite their shared goal of a world that is safe to live in and free from the threat of demons, undead, and Lovecraftian beasts, their shared history of conflict prevents them from achieving a lasting peace. There's a lot of potential for moral complexity (which is really what I'm talking about when I mean darkness) on both sides.
The problem is that the two sides are not, in fact, on equal ethical footing. The Horde - specifically the Orcs and Forsaken - continue to push forward aggressively. The Alliance has, in nearly every case, simply been acting in self-defense. The only exception I can think of here is the Southern Barrens, but given that this is just one front in a larger war, it's hard to say the Alliance is unjustified. In fact, the Alliance commander on that front was a principled professional who attempted to keep casualties to a minimum (sadly, due to a miscalculation, his actions led to a massacre of Tauren at the hands of the Quillboar, thus earning him an ill-deserved reputation as a butcher.)
Even the "original sin" of the Alliance, the internment of Orcs following the second war, was the better alternative. With Draenor in ruins, they could not simply send the Orcs home, and obviously they could not simply set them loose to regroup and begin the war again.
The thing is, every time that the Alliance has the potential to go into darker territory, the Horde beats them to the punch. The introduction of the Worgen is a prime example. The prospect of the Worgen joining the Alliance made me expect we were going to see a far more reckless and bloodthirsty side to the Alliance, yet the only time the Worgen were really able to stand in the spotlight was during their starting experience, and they were put up against a more-Scourge-like-than-ever Forsaken. A little animal ferocity does not really seem like an overreaction against a legion of undead marching into your homeland and massacring your people.
With a Warchief like Garrosh, it's hard to feel ambiguous about fighting off the Horde. Apparently, in Tides of War, Garrosh has decided that his goal is to wipe out the races of the Alliance, to literally commit mass genocide. Anyone following a guy like that is going to be hard to sympathize with, which I find a bit frustrating when playing Horde toons (that said, what little of the Dominance Offensive I've seen has helped a lot with those feelings - we've finally got a chance to oppose Hellscream from the inside.)
So the key here is to distinguish between the people of the Horde and the Garrosh loyalists. And it is there that Shieldwall gets to make us feel a little uncomfortable with what we're doing. Much of the plotline has you spying on Garrosh and attempting to prevent him from acquiring the Divine Bell, a Mogu artifact that could cause some serious trouble. You finally manage to discover its location, using the Horde's own resources, and you manage to beat the Horde to the punch, delivering the Bell to Darnassus for safe keeping.
However, not long after (due to the Grand Commendation and possibly my human racial, it was the same day) the Horde manages to infiltrate Darnassus (I assume you do this yourself on Horde side) and steal the Bell. When investigating Darnassus, you meet Jaina there, who determines that the Horde traveled through Dalaran.
Having spent years and years giving the Horde the benefit of the doubt, only to see her city destroyed at their hands (the same city in which she allowed the Horde to kill her own father in the name of peace) and now being betrayed by the very people she had held up as an example of how the two sides could, in fact, get along, she decides it's time to kick the Horde out of Dalaran.
And that's when you are tasked with taking down any Sunreavers who resist arrest. You actually wind up killing like 30 Sunreavers, clearing out every part of the city. Aethas Sunreaver protests, insisting that the Sunreavers are loyal to the Kirin Tor, and that if anyone in the city was helping the Horde fight the Alliance, they were acting alone. The protests fall on deaf ears - Jaina is done giving the Horde the benefit of the doubt.
With the purge complete, and the surviving Sunreavers locked up in the Violet Hold, you return to Lion's Landing. Yet when Varian greets you there, he's horrified.
Because guess what? Varian had been in talks to bring the Blood Elves back into the Alliance. It would have meant a massive blow to the Horde, yet also could have really started the ball rolling, setting a precedent to reach out to other Horde races and dismantle Garrosh's war. Yet with this rash action, the whole thing is a lost cause.
Jaina's still not convinced it was the wrong thing to do, and that's what makes me happy. We know that there are many in the Horde who would honor a peace with the Alliance, yet as long as they keep propping up people like Garrosh, trust is nearly impossible.
There's an interesting note, though. Agent Connelly sends you a letter that says the Sunreavers are just as pissed off at Garrosh as they are at Jaina. Sure, she was the one who locked them up, but if it had not been for Garrosh, they would still be welcome members of the Kirin Tor.
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