Warlords of Draenor is our first expansion not to have a single "Troll Instance." Granted, the Trolls do have a certain presence, what with the fact that Vol'jin is now the first non-Orc Warchief of the Horde (giving the Horde a certain Azerothian legitimacy, actually - no offense to Thrall, who is of course a native Azerothian himself. *Insert joke about long-form birth certificates.*)
For the first few expansions, our dealings tended to be with individual Troll Empires. Vanilla had us fight the Gurubashi and, though they were a much smaller presence, the Farraki. We fended off the Amani in BC (who might have been ok with joining the Horde had it not been for the addition of the Blood Elves.) Wrath set us agains the Drakkari, but in all these cases, we were dealing with empires that were well into their declines. We allied with the Zandalari tribe who seemed perfectly friendly (to both factions) until the rather shocking turnabout in patch 4.1.
I've always been a little uncomfortable with that turnaround, primarily because not just in previous expansions, but as recently as 4.0, we had been working with the Zandalari. In Stranglethorn Vale, there are still quests where you help the Zandalari fight against Jindo's attempts to resurrect the threat of the Gurubashi. How the Zandalari so suddenly went from helping us fight Jindo to providing him with troops and allies within the space of a single patch... well, it wasn't really earned narratively. There was nothing remotely close to foreshadowing.
Still, the change was made, and the Zandalari developed into a unified threat - the oldest of the Troll Empires uniting the other tribes under their banners. We dealt with a contingent that was sent to Pandaria, and we foiled them in Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman, but the Zandalari forces on whole are probably safely fortified somewhere in the South Seas.
That said, things aren't going great for them. Indeed, the main motivation for their bellicose turn was the Cataclysm's effects of Zandalar. The island is sinking into the sea.
The key figures among the Zandalar are King Rastakhan and the Prophet Zul. "Zul" is almost certainly a pseudonym - Zul is apparently a kind of honorific prefix. I don't know how complex Blizzard has gotten with their Troll etymology, but to take a few names into account, Sen'jin and Vol'jin have both been chiefs of the Darkspear, which might suggest the suffix "jin" means "chief." Zul'jin, who had been the Amani Emperor, might have dropped his personal name for what was really more of a title: Zul'jin meaning "Honored Chief."
It was Zul - a mysterious prophet - who galvanized the militarization of the Zandalari. Rastakhan likely does not have firm control over his Empire as more people have been signing up for Zul's quasi-nationalist vision.
It actually wouldn't surprise me if there are dissidents among the Zandalari who would still see us as allies. Certainly, even some of the trolls we helped in Stranglethorn have turned to the dark side (Jinrok the Breaker, the first boss in Throne of Thunder, had been a quest giver in Stranglethorn Vale,) but it still seems a bit shocking for all of them to turn against us so suddenly.
To go into tinfoil hat territory, I wonder if Zul is really a troll at all. The Old Gods are largely based on HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, and one of the evil creatures in that is Nyarlathotep - the only eldritch abomination in the mythos who bothers disguising himself as a human. Zul's preachings about reunifying the Trolls and making war on the rest of Azeroth would certainly cause a lot of death and chaos, and the swiftness with which he turned the Zandalari to this task suggests something that goes a bit farther than charisma.
The Trolls are the oldest humanoid race on Azeroth - all the Elves and the Naga are off-shoots of the Trolls. In many ways, Azeroth is really the Troll planet. If the next expansion takes us to the South Seas, I can't imagine that we won't be sent to deal with the Zandalari - even if Azshara is the main villain.
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