The Will of the Frostwolves

Generally speaking, the Frostwolves are the "good" Orc clan. Orc players could potentially come from just about any Orc clan (though not the Thunderlords, as they were apparently wiped out in our timeline, though given who their Warlord was, and their proximity, it wouldn't be too hard to imagine that the line between Thunderlord and Frostwolf is kind of fuzzy.)

When we arrive on Draenor, the Frostwolf Clan is one of the few that has not joined with the Iron Horde. Their divergence from the majority of the Orcs has put them in a desperate position, with a massive army threatening to overrun their homeland, and their chief, Garad, falling to what is revealed (Spoilers for Frostfire Ridge quests) to be his own son turned traitor. They have made a powerful enemy and are now outcasts from the greater Orcish civilization, the lone Orc clan that stands for real honor and a desire for peace.

The question is: Why?

Sure, we like the Frostwolves. Thrall's clan represented all that was good about the Orcs, and he worked very hard to instill a sense of pride in their roots while weeding out the brutality that had defined the Old Horde. But the thing one should remember is that in our timeline, the Frostwolves still fought for the Horde. They didn't drink the Blood of Mannoroth, though doing so was apparently really an optional thing (Orgrim Doomhammer, who of course was the second Warchief, also declined the blood.) They still participated in the slaughter of the Draenei - Durotan himself betrayed Restalaan by telling the Horde forces how to disrupt Leafshadow's cloak over Telmor (and yes, if you've quested through Talador, these things should sound familiar to you, though things go down very differently.)

The Frostwolves aided the Horde in the First War, and pushed up into Lordaeron during the Second War. It was there that Durotan and Draka were murdered by Gul'dan's minions, for finally turning their back on the Horde's corruption, but that's a pretty long time to be going along with the Old Horde, which, let's be clear, was worse than the Iron Horde is.

So this really raises the question: Why did the Frostwolves not join the Iron Horde when their Universe-A counterpart joined the original Horde? One would think that Fel magic would be far more objectionable to them than industrialization. The Iron Horde is free of the dominance of Gul'dan's Shadow Council (though Ner'zhul's Void Magic is potentially just as threatening - the Void might very well be a third powerful threat to compete with the Old Gods and the Burning Legion, assuming it's not connected to either or both.)

Well, there's a pretty reasonable answer to all of this: Garrosh.

Garrosh was able to guide the creation of the Iron Horde. It's for that reason alone that the Warsong Clan is the dominant one this time around. The Warsong of the original Horde were really just one clan among many. Garrosh saw to it that Gul'dan was unable to dominate the Horde this time, and he got a huge population to embrace a bunch of strange and dangerous technology, kicking the Orcs from Iron Age to Industrial in the space of a few months. Garrosh had a beef with - well, all of Azeroth - but I think that his biggest was with Thrall, who had admittedly given him some conflicting instructions on how to lead as Warchief - though I'd argue that Garrosh, being a grown adult, should have been able to understand some of the nuances of what Thrall was telling him, and was totally responsible for what he did. Still, Garrosh saw Thrall as the friend who had betrayed him, and so it seems likely that when he was telling his father about setting up the Iron Horde, he might have told Grommash to exclude the Frostwolf Clan in retribution for his perceived betrayal.

But what's interesting about this is that it implies that the position of the Frostwolves is not really based on their principles or their "goodness" as an ideal group of reasonable Orcs, but the arbitrary whim of a megalomaniac outside of their clan (and timeline, for that matter.)

Had Garrosh simply had a different mindset, would the Frostwolves be a part of the Iron Horde? An enemy to face? And if Garrosh wasn't the one to blackball the clan, then what does that imply? That the Frostwolves are more comfortable with Warlocks running things? It's good that the Frostwolves are on our side in Draenor (especially because it gives Horde players a place to set up their base,) but what do we really think of these Orcs? What was it that made them lose their nobility in our timeline, even if they regained it eventually?