The Horde: Fighting the Past in Draenor

Warlords of Draenor is going to be pretty weird for the Horde.

We're heading into an alternate past version of Draenor, yet the alterations to the past suggest that what we'll be seeing is really what Draenor was like before the corruption of the Orcs. While the original Horde wasn't going to be motoring around with Goblin-designed siege engines in their genocidal war against the Draenei, in many ways, what we're going to be seeing is a reasonable representation of the past.

While the role that the Burning Legion played in the creation of the original Horde is not present in the Iron Horde, in a rather true way, the Iron Horde really is the Horde of old. It's got the same leaders (albeit shuffled around.)

But the modern Horde, with all that history, has just gone through an identity crisis. Garrosh took his appointment to the role of Warchief as a mandate to recreate the Horde in the image that he had developed in his imagination. Garrosh's "True Horde" tried to have all the aggression and conquest of the Old Horde, but without the use of demonic magic. Indeed, while Garrosh was consolidating his power, he purged Orgrimmar of the Warlocks in the Clef of Shadow (I wonder if they'll get new Warlock trainer NPCs?) Despite his willingness to employ "Shadowmages," Dark Shaman, and the power of the Old Gods, Garrosh basically decided he was ok as long as he didn't do anything involving demons.

And I think that Garrosh's conscience was clear. He always had a fairly unnuanced view of the world, and so it was baffling for him to imagine that people under his leadership would balk at his methods. Vol'jin, whose Darkspear Tribe had already broken away from a powerful empire that engaged in dangerous magics and brutal aggression (namely, the Gurubashi Empire,) became a figurehead for the entire dissenting population within the Horde.

Garrosh's fall at our hands was, I imagine, a shock to him. But since Garrosh ultimately has a simple mind (and by simple I don't mean stupid,) he takes the rebellion as a sign that he is being held back by the Horde as it exists on Azeroth.

And it's true that the modern Horde is extraordinarily different from the one that marched in through the Dark Portal. The inhabitants of Lordaeron and Quel'thalas were enemies of that Horde, and the Tauren had never heard of it. The Goblins and Trolls had worked with the Horde, but the Darkspear and the Bilgewater Cartel were not really part of the Horde until far later.

Ultimately, the Horde that Thrall built - the ragtag band of misfits, trying to survive - is the one that won the Battle of Orgrimmar, and Vol'jin stand to be the true inheritor of Thrall's legacy (even though the World Shaman is still around, he's semi-retired, it seems.)

So it is an odd sort of homecoming. And it is an odd sort of fight that the Horde has. In the Iron Horde, Garrosh has literally brought the Horde's past back to fight it. But the new Horde, which, yes, maybe shouldn't even be called the Horde anymore, will prevail.