Orc Fatigue

Two disclaimers before I begin:

First of all: I get it. Orcs are the iconic Warcraft race. The humans are too generic to be at the center (though they're just to the side of it,) and while the other vanilla races are all pre-established fantasy classics, the Orcs really are the first thing to think of when you hear "Warcraft."

Second, I am still excited for this new expansion. Draenor pre-shattering looks gorgeous, and it's a great opportunity to explore the history of one of my two favorite races, the Draenei. I love time-travel stories and the ability to see a very different version of the places you know, and the images we've seen of Karabor, Shattrath, and Auchindoun hold an amazing amount of promise. Also, practically every mechanical feature (with the exception of the tiny number of starting dungeons - hoping that's just for 6.0 and that we get more in patches) looks great.

But.

Can we get a freaking rest from the Orcs? (For now, no.)

The decision to focus this expansion on the Orcs and the Old Horde is, quite frankly, baffling. The entire premise of Mists of Pandaria was forcing the Horde to confront its own dark tendencies and past. For years, Thrall had romanticized the Old Horde, and put Garrosh in charge to try to bring back the glory days.

The lesson we learned from that was that the old days were crap. The Old Horde were bastards, and trying to emulate them is like putting fascists in charge to make the trains run on time.

The end of Mists of Pandaria had the Horde learning that lesson in the hardest possible way: a civil war. Garrosh was defeated, and for the first time in its history, an Orc bowed down to a non-Orc as Warchief.

That's some serious plot progression. The Orcs, who had been major players throughout all of Warcraft, would finally have to step back into a support role.

Except now we're doing it again. Immediately. Like, right after.

Garrosh proved that you don't need demon blood to turn an Orc into a monster. We get that. So what is the point of showing us this "Iron Horde?" Oh, were the Orcs kind of jerks to begin with? Yeah, we got that.

We were poised to step forward, to really take a new look at the cosmos of Warcraft and deal with new threats, or old ones that had been sitting around (Azshara, for example.)

But we're getting dragged back into it.

There are twelve other playable races that you could focus on. Many of them have super-compelling backstories - the Humans, Dwarves, Night Elves, Undead, Trolls. Others are just dying to get fleshed out - Goblins, Tauren, Worgen, Draenei (ok, this last one should be served a bit in Warlords of Draenor.)

We know this history. We know about Ner'zhul and Gul'dan and Blackhand and Hellscream.

The final boss of Mists was Garrosh Hellscream. The final boss of Warlords is Grommash Hellscream. Really!?

Likewise, we are dealing with time-travel here, but as far as I can tell, Blizzard is trying very very hard to remove any of the cool, mind bending problems that can occur with time travel. Ok, sure, it's hard to write that well, but it could be so cool!

The Alliance has a right to be pissed about this, because it means they'll likely just be set up as another bastion of pure good with very little nuance, and the Horde has a right to be pissed off, because they already went through their painful civil war to redeem themselves.

The sad thing is that if we hadn't just dealt with the Horde falling to its old ways in Mists of Pandaria, I would be 100% on board with this expansion. But right now, it seems like Blizzard's creative team has an Orc addiction. And we're about to OD.

(For the record, for all of its flaws, I had no problem with Thrall being a central figure in Cataclysm. It made perfect sense that the most powerful shaman in the world would have to deal with the elemental chaos unleashed by Deathwing.)

(And again, for the record, I have no plans to stop playing due to this. I'm willing to give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt. Sure, I might be a little sick of the Orcs, but everything else seems pretty cool. While I'm a big lore wonk, it's really the gameplay that keeps me excited.)

(But seriously, let's get some serious Dwarf, Worgen, Gnome, Tauren, Goblin, and Undead lore. I eagerly await more Draenei lore.)