We're still in Alpha/Beta, so bear in mind that the spoilers I'm going to be talking about are all subject to change. Still, with the expansion less than four months away, I also don't really see them changing too much.
Varok Saurfang is a funny character for WoW. There are certainly WoW characters who have become important despite not having existed in the RTS games. Take Garrosh, for example, who was only introduced in Burning Crusade but had an enormous impact on the story of Warcraft. There have now been more expansions to WoW than there were Warcraft RTS games and expansions, so it makes sense that this is where the lore of the Warcraft universe is created.
But Saurfang is an oddity because I don't think they ever meant for him to be an important character.
All the major cities as built in vanilla had elite, named NPCs who were there to serve as extra-tough guards in case members of the other faction came in and attacked. Saurfang was just supposed to be a big speed bump in case the Alliance attempted to attack Orgrimmar through the front gate.
But he caught on in popularity, becoming something of a meme, due to that toughness. Blizzard caught on quickly, and made him into an important NPC in the Ahn'Qiraj events, having him lead the Might of Kalimdor - the first of WoW's united Alliance/Horde forces to take down a bigger threat. He's been played a bit like a kind of Saladin character - the worthy adversary that even his enemies admire.
In BC we met his Mag'har son in Outland, who would then go on to die to the Lich King and be raised as a death knight for us to fight in Icecrown Citadel. Saurfang himself was sent along with Garrosh, and we began to get a sense of his personality: Saurfang was the old veteran who had seen the depravities of the Old Horde and wanted something better for his people. He'd become a figure in the resistance against Garrosh and with Thrall retired and Garrosh dead, Saurfang has emerged, sort of by default, as the racial leader of the Orcs.
Not bad for a kind of random NPC.
Now, it appears that old Varok is going to have some interesting stuff to do in BFA.
Spoilers to follow.
Saurfang is loyal to the Horde, but what we witness in the Siege of Lordaeron (which distinguishes it from the Battle of Undercity, which happened during Wrath and you can't do it anymore,) shakes his faith in Sylvanas as Warchief. Or rather, it totally destroys it.
Sylvanas doesn't hesitate to use every method at her disposal if it means victory, and as a former member of the Scourge, that leaves her with some pretty reprehensible methods. There are two big moments that really leave Saurfang furious.
When the siege refuses to break and even Sylvanas' Azerite war machine is broken by the Alliance armies, Sylvanas deploys her blight onto the field - a field that has both Alliance and Horde troops. As flesh melts, she raises the skeletal remnants of both armies to charge at the Alliance lines.
Saurfang objects, as there are wounded and dying soldiers out there in the field that she is simply letting die. But Sylvanas simply wants to wipe the board clean, regardless of who is in the line of fire.
That's bad enough, but it gets worse. Ultimately, it becomes clear that Sylvanas never believed they could win the battle. The Alliance is so well-entrenched on the Eastern Kingdoms and knows the city practically as well as the Horde does, and so her actual plan is to blow the whole place up, luring as many Alliance forces and heroes in before she does (one presumes that Jaina does a mass teleport to get everyone out, making it a technical victory, but a pyrrhic one at best.)
When Saurfang learns of this plan, he refuses to go along, instead opting to stand and face the Alliance forces and earn a good warrior's death. Ironically, this gives Sylvanas the time to prepare. The Alliance faces Saurfang in the courtyard of Lordaeron's palace and defeats him, but Anduin refuses to have him killed, instead healing him and taking him prisoner.
The Horde then sends an infiltration team to try to extract Saurfang from the Stormwind Stockades, but when they find the High Overlord, he refuses to come with, claiming that as long as Sylvanas is running the Horde, he's not coming back.
And that's a pretty huge deal.
Saurfang is clearly not blindly loyal like Nazgrim was - the latter knew that Garrosh was a monster but felt duty-bound to serve him nonetheless. But it seems pretty extreme for Saurfang to refuse to come back to the Horde at all. What are we to make of that?
His objections are reasonable: the Blight is a weapon that does not discriminate, and leaves the land ruined. While his son died to the Lich King, the Blight was what devastated the Horde troops under Draenosh's command. We were told that that was the action of a rogue apothecary serving Varimathras, but doesn't this look like standard operating procedure for the Forsaken now?
There was perhaps some hope that the position of Warchief might force Sylvanas to moderate her tendencies, but instead we've just seen them continue on a larger stage. Garrosh seemed pretty bad, but could Sylvanas actually be worse?
Saurfang is old-school, and setting aside principles like honor in the name of expediency does not sit well with him. The battle-cry is "Lok'tar O'gar," which means "Victory or Death," and both options are acceptable if one comports oneself with honor.
But on the other hand, there's an argument to be made that Saurfang is simply betraying the Horde here. Yes, Sylvanas threw a bunch of lives away in a ploy to lure the Alliance into the Undercity, but she needed to in order for the plan to work. She was never going to be able to save her city, but she needed the Alliance to think that she thought she could, and that meant mounting a full-fledged defense of what was essentially a giant bomb.
These kinds of covert tactics are very need-to-know, and Saurfang had to play his part - that of the battlefield commander. It's far easier to play such a part when that's what you think you're doing.
Saurfang's refusal to return is a big choice. He's not joining the Alliance or anything, but he is choosing the life of a prisoner over leading his people in a time of war. Generally, while prisoners of war are supposed to be treated well, it is the duty of a POW to attempt escape, if possible. Saurfang could easily have gone with the extraction team, but he chose not to.
So what is his plan?
It seems to be that Saurfang is in a prime position to negotiate a peace deal at the end of the expansion, but only if the Horde is willing to accept him back into the fold. That's going to be a tough proposition, as he's currently basically just told the Warchief to go screw herself and refused to even come back when she sent some of the Horde's most important leaders (including new allies) on an extraordinarily dangerous mission to rescue him.
Saurfang might be the right guy to talk to the Alliance and hash out some kind of deal that leads to peace (though as someone who plays primarily - but not exclusively - Alliance, I think the main way to maintain peace is for the Horde to stop freaking attacking the Alliance! Seriously, dudes. You leave us alone and we'll leave you alone.) But he can only make such a deal if the Horde vests in him some kind of diplomatic authority.
What seems more likely with what we've got is that Saurfang would be branded as a traitor. When he struck against Garrosh, he wasn't working exclusively with the Alliance - the Darkspear Rebellion was a home-grown revolution that only tolerated Alliance cooperation rather than making its power base in Alliance territories.
Where do we see Saurfang ending up by the end of this expansion?
There's the possibility that he'll simply take the role of Warchief after defeating Sylvanas, though that feels way too much like Siege of Orgrimmar 2.0. And frankly, badass as Saurfang is, I think Sylvanas is probably more likely to walk away from that fight (especially as she doesn't really care about fighting fair.)
So then possibility two is that he's dead. Either he dies to Sylvanas or proves his loyalty to the Horde by dying in a fight against either the Alliance or whatever the real big bad of the expansion is (my money's on N'zoth.)
I wonder if there's a way for him and Sylvanas to reconcile. Perhaps, if there is some lasting peace between the factions, he could actually be the Horde ambassador to Stormwind. That would be crazy, but I've always wanted to see the Cold War intrigue that you could have if the two factions were officially at peace.
There's also the way of status quo, where Saurfang is welcomed back into the Horde with little fanfare. This seems like it would be a waste of a good plot, but it's not unprecedented (like how Neptulon just kind of showed up at the Shaman class hall.)
A darker turn would be to find out that old Varok has actually lost his mind. Maybe the Old Gods are tormenting him with visions of his son, who, as a death knight and member of the Scourge, might have had his soul locked away in whatever horrible dark realm that Arthas now drifts through. Maybe we're going to see him lose it.
But we've still got a ways to go, and I suspect that the story of BFA is going to be a rather complex one, dealing with the local politics of Kul Tiras and Zandalar, as well as the politics of both factions. But they've clearly singled out Varok Saurfang for something special. It remains to be seen what it is.
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