I've seen several posts like this asserting or implying that anyone critical of Horde actions is not rational, or not smart enough to understand shades of grey, or doesn't get nuances. I think that torturing people to death in twisted medical experiments, genocide, destroying people's minds then keeping them around as toys, forcing prisoners to fight to the death for amusement, and creating a plague to wipe out all life qualify as evil, and that's what the Forsaken are up to.

This is not done in secret laboratories and by groups that are set up as hiding in the shadows or operating away from prying eyes, this is done out in the open in the Undercity, by every Forsaken base commander and his associates, and at every opportunity. The forsaken even go so far as to assassinate undead who do not wish to participate in the atrocities rather than let them leave.

I still have yet to see any reasonable argument for why the Alliance should view the Forsaken as morally superior to the Scourge. I think the Scourge might actually come out ahead in a comparison - while both are happy to kill huge swathes of people, the Scourge seems to do it purely to gain power and remove enemies, they just don't go in for the kind of torture and cruelty that is so characteristic of the forsaken. Also, while the forsaken have made a point of killing all living humans in their lands (see the early quests to kill off remaining Lorderon farmers), the Scourge are not opposed to working with the living (specifically the Vykrul and Cult of the Damned).

Incidentally Sylvanas either bears responsibility for the open and repeated action of the Forsaken as their commander, is deliberately ignoring what's going on in the streets of her city and everywhere her armies operate, or is powerless to command her forces not to commit horrible atrocities. Since Thrall supports her and is willing to defend against any attempts to end the horrors that go on under her watch, he's equally culpable - you can't say 'oh, well I don't support genocide, but if you try to stop these guys from it, I'll attack you, but I am not responsible for what they do, really'.

The fact that you or Sylvanas don't like Gairthos doesn't change the fact that she entered into an agreement with him, then betrayed and killed him rather than honor her portion of the agreement. Whatever else Garithos did doesn't change that fact - and if Wrynn signed a peace treaty with Sylvanas, from what you're saying here he could expect her to betray and kill him at the first opportunity, as neither she nor you think well of him either.

"Using" part of the Alliance armies to fight battles is pretty much the entire point of having an Alliance and commanders. Garithos didn't commit Kael to a suicide mission or anything of the sort, he left Kael on guard duty. Kael opted to consort with the Naga, Garithos ordered him not to, then arrested him after he violated direct orders and tried to cover it up. Garithos may have been in the wrong, but he was acting within his authority, and arrested someone violating his orders and working with forces hostile to the alliance, he did not kill Kael and his forces on the spot the way Sylvanas did to him.

Garithos certainly wasn't the best guy in the Alliance, but I think his order to Kael'thas not to consort with the naga was reasonable. Working with allies of the Burning Legion is generally not the best plan, and with hindsight we see that Kael'thas's association with the Naga ended with him attempting to summon Kil'Jaeden to Azeroth, hardly a good outcome.

I don't think anyone in the alliance wants to set the precedent that murdering everyone else with a claim to a territory gives you a legitimate claim to that territory. But that's exactly what they've done - prior to WOW they betrayed and killed the last army of Lorderon, then early on in WOW new Forsaken participate in genocide to get rid of the remaining civilians. They don't have a legitimate claim to the capital anymore, they agreed that the living remnants of Lorderon had the right to it, then killed them and took it from who they said were the rightful owners.

I haven't seen this question asked/answered anywhere, and to be honest it comes as a massive surprise. Either I'm overlooking something really obvious, or people haven't been paying attention.

During the Storm Peak quest progression, Thorim encounters Loken, and is captured. Loken specifically announces that Veranus is to be captured and contained (I can't find/remember the exact quotes at the moment) within Ulduar as he has "special plans for The Broodmother". Everyone knows this part.

So moving on, we're now looking at screenshots of Razorscale - presumably the 3rd boss of Ulduar. You can swiftly conclude that this is Veranus as a result of _______'s corruption. (Fill in the blank with "Loken", "Yogg-Saron", "Iron Council", whatever really.)

So upon first glance, the first question which hit me hard was:
- Why the hell is Veranus now an Infinite!? What involvement does the Infinites have in Ulduar; how the hell does any of that tie together?

But according to the Wiki Page, and the new Proto-Drakes available in 3.1, it "appears" that this very similar texture is not in-fact Infinite, but "Iron-Bound."

So a second question comes to mind:
- Why the hell is Veranus now made of metal? Who did this? If Yogg-Saron is responsible for corrupting Veranus, it hardly seems acceptable that the Old God responsible for the Curse of Flesh would press rewind and transform a fleshy Proto-Drake into a metallic construct. So I guess the next finger to point would be at Loken, since he claimed he had plans for Veranus. What was the motive?

Arrrgh. Frustrating questions.

As for all the Bolvar discussions a few pages back... I highly doubt we'd see him come back as a Death Knight - that's just silly. Arthas didn't even come into contact with him. The idea of Bolvar being captured and tortured is also out the window. Arthas retreated, whilst Bolvar was burned to ashes. Alexstrasza is clearly hiding "the true fate of the young paladin" (assuming this is indeed Bolvar she's referring to), but it doesn't necessarily mean he's gonna be a boss in Icecrown or anything silly like that. For all we know, Alexstrasza pulled him out of the fire, carried him back to the Temple and restored his life or something. Personally I'd prefer he just stayed dead - he had a powerful, dramatic death. The whole scene wouldn't have been half as influencial if he had retreated/survived.

Turning Veranus to iron would probably make her easier for Loken to control. I don't remember any mention of animals like proto-drakes being results of the Curse of Flesh, only intelligent races, so it wouldn't be a rewind button. And since I doubt she's susceptible to Yogg-Saron's whispers it was probably easiest to turn her to metal, which Loken seems to have a lot of control over.

Well seeing as you got a machine that spits out iron dwarves, troggs and slimes in Halls of Stone and the mechagnome in Borean Tundra turns normal fleshy gnomes into mechagnomes it's very likely there is some flesh-to-stone machine in Ulduar.

For why it's done, iron/runed/stormforged are supposedly "superior" versions of the flesh/frost/stone counterparts. We saw the iron dwarves using runes on stone giants in Howling Fjord and Grizzly Hills to turn them against the earthen which also made them more powerful. And propably also easier to control as said earlier.

Considering that there's a Flesh-to-Stone machine at work in the Borean Tundra (the mecha-gnome turning Fizzcrank gnomes into mechanic one) I'm not surprised that there's a bigger machine at work inside Ulduar. I don't know the lore reason as to WHY Loken would do that, but perhaps he feels that his contingent of Iron Dwarves should have rides made of iron as well.

Well actually they are, and they do. All those 'experiments' and 'tortures' are in name of the Royal Apothecary Society, which now is removed from the Horde. Don't forget that 'in the open' for us, is not the same as in the open for the rest of the world. We get those quests, because we are introduced by the 'previous' questhub. "Your reputation preceeds you" kind of connection.

The limitless generalisation that the humans do (like you show), are part of the reason why there is an all-out war again. Don't forget the numerous subfactions that together form a faction. There was a time where each and every greenskin was put in a concentration camp. Talk about racism.


Thrall, Sylvanas are just as responsible for Putress as the Alliance, the Order of the Silver Hand and Varian Wrynn are for Arthas Menethil.

Is this actually a fact? It's rather hard to tell the state of The Undercity or even the Royal Apothecary Society post Wrathgate, as there are 0 Forsaken/Undercity quest givers.

I think the "noble savage" idea is to act as a foil for Varians "savage noble" mentality. Don't forget that both characters had similar experiences, both being made to fight in arenas at the hands of the opposing faction. Whats worse is the Alliance arenas were more systemic and made all orcs fight eachother compared to Varian who was just a captive and slave by circumstance and made to fight random enemies instead of his own brothers. Despite this Thrall still strives for peace and doesn't carry the grudge that Varian does which makes for good storytelling. Thrall should be the bitter bloodthirsty ruler out for revenge for wrongs done to him and his people and Varian should be the noble king who wants to set everything right after his homecoming but the opposite is true.

Which quest givers are you referring to?

The only NPC pertaining to the society gets removed from Undercity is Putress. To my knowledge, the rest of the society is intact, the previous Grand Apothecary, Faranell, is still there. Undoubtedly this is for gameplay reasons, although don't know why they didn't just phase them out too. Correct me if I'm wrong, I completed the questline as Horde in beta, but I doubt that bit has changed.

Sylvanas and the rest got really pissed off and obviously did some... reorganization. What happened was more or less what the society anticipated from since it's conception, with Putress getting (inadvertebly) too much power and used whatever they managed to create as he saw fit, obviously as he was conspiring with Varimathras it ended up becoming a total a disaster.

I think with your recent posts, and the other sudden influx of pink-skin apologetics into this thread, you've pretty much proved that assertion is completely correct. I don't think I've ever seen as many blatant attempts to crowbar in a Tolkienian binary morality into a thread as has happened over the last couple of pages.

As someone said up-thread, the World of Warcraft is about shades of grey, not good and evil. I don't know how many times this points need to be hammered into people's heads.

Leaving aside faction pride for a moment, it should really behove people interested in this subject to read what the PnP RPGs say on the topic - after all, they are pretty much canon (or at least all their content has been approved by Metzen). Granted, some of their info may be out of date (e.g. the Taunka), but it would certainly clear up some of the many misconceptions people make, certainly to do with the nature and philosophy of the Forsaken for example.

Although this is only a game, given what you (presumably) know about orcs and their lore in WoW, your readiness to resort to naked justification for genocide should really give you some pause and perhaps trigger some reflection about what morality you pick up from video games.

Given that I've never played the RTS games my knowledge of Warcraft lore from before WoW comes solely from WowWiki, so it's quite possible that I have some facts wrong. However, my understanding is that every orc that crossed the Dark Portal into Azeroth was an invader with the single goal of wiping out the intelligent races on Azeroth. Given that, I'm not sure that my real life morality is at stake when commenting on wiping out an invading alien force. If it is then I suppose the humans were morally bankrupt when they killed off the aliens in Independence Day or nuked the planet in Aliens.

Alien race brings war to citizens of a planet. Kills many during this war in a quest to claim everything as their own.

Swear I've seen this in tons of movies and television shows, most of the time the end result was complete annihilation of the invading race or staving off their attack and forcing them to retreat by almost completely annihilating their invasion forces. Nice try though.

Internment camp was just another plot device so that the orcs would be forced to look back to their shamanistic roots and possibly seek a path of redemption. The battle at Mt. Hyjal was supposed to be this supposed redemption however I don't really see it as that. It could be rationalized that they were fighting for survival just like the others.

Varien is justified in his reactions. He has no control over the horde and all that he has seen come out of the mutual cohabitation of azeroth is deceit, betrayal and the death of his friend. Granted these may not be explicitly done by the central parts of the Horde but they are done in the Horde's name--the head is responsible for the actions of a limb.

Don't hate a guy for wanting to cure cancer by cutting off that which grew it.

Yes, there is probably another way.

Look, he was headed to Theramore to discuss relations with the horde and possibly keep the peace, he got kidnapped and made into a slave. He tries again and the Twilight Hammer attacks.

Maybe something wants Horde and Alliance to declare all out war on eachother because it saw what they could do when they united.

That actually ties back into the previous Old God speculation as the last time the Horde and Alliance united was to defeat C'Thun and the Qiraji.

Let's try this again. You are Varian Wrynn and your best friend just murdered his father and the whole city of Stratholme. Goodbye mighty human kingdom.


Let's try this again. You are a citizen of Lordaeron. Your family was betrayed and killed by Arthas and his knights. You then turn into an undead. You are freed by Sylvanas (about whom we can tell a similar story). Then, while you run through what used to be a mighty human kingdom in order to bring the traitor to justice you see all of your kingdom in ruins. Assaulted from multiple sides by the scourge AND by humans.

By your morals, would you not blame humanity?

My point is not that the Forsaken should hate the humans. My point is that by your arguments, the forsaken (and the orcs) have as much reason to 'exterminate' the humans. Thrall, and Sylvanas, might be above those sentiments, but they cannot mind control their underlings. They row with what they have.

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Well, I have no concrete evidence. But seeing Sylvanas' reaction and the expulsion of Putress, we can assume as much. Even though the low level hubs, and Undercity to an extent, are the same. This is the nature of the game, and you can't expect a whole revamp of starting zones adding in phasing. I mean by canon Onyxia is killed by Wrynn, but I can still pay her 'a visit' if I want.

Yes, I get the whole thing about them not being able to go back and remove these NPCs from the old world. :P

I meant going forward in WoW's semi-canonical storyline, there's no sign of the Forsaken. For instance:

WoW Classic takes place before Burning Crusade, everything in Outland assumes you did everything in Azeroth, the isle of Sunwell assumes you did all the previous patches before hand and Kael was defeated once.

Northrend takes place after WoW Classic/Burning Crusade, it assumes you're a champion that went to Outland and helped in taking down Illidan and did all that stuff involving Kael.

In Northrend it's even tighter, the game assumes you did Dragonblight before Storm Peaks/Icecrown, it assumes that you did Grizzly Hills before Drak'tharon Keep, and did the Keep before Zul'Drak.

My point was post Wrathgate, there's no longer any sign of the Forsaken, whereas before they were heavily featured in both the Fjord and Dragonblight, afterwards they're nowhere to be found, so it's hard to get a feel for the state of the Forsaken/Society from that point on, because anything in the past content isn't an indicator of how the faction is doing as a whole after.

So it's hard to say what steps Sylvanas took after Wrathgate even though Undercity looks the same as always, minus Varimathas in the throne room.

And Varian responded by sending his forces to Northrend to bring Arthas to justice. It's not like he's turned a blind eye to Arthas' actions.

I'm not saying that the Forsaken have no right to be mad at humanity or to fight for their survival. I'm saying that I wouldn't blame Varian for associating the RAS with the Horde. After all, wasn't it started by Sylvannas? (serious question, as I said above I'm not overly knowledgeable about all of the lore). It's obvious to us that the RAS betrayed Sylvannas and the Horde, but I don't think it would be obvious to Varian. To him it probably looks like a run of the mill power struggle within the Forsaken ranks.

There's also a distinction between the power structures here. The RAS is ostensibly under the control of the Forsaken (Sylvannas) and by extension under the control of Thrall, by virtue of him being warchief. I'm not especially familiar with pre-WoW lore, but from what I gather it would be more than a stretch to say that Arthas was under Varian's jurisdiction.

Yes, there is no unified leader for the Alliance. Lordaeron and Stormwind are two different countries. Varian only rules Stormwind.

Varian sees it as Thrall should of had more power over the RAS but the players and the lore show us how separate the Forsaken actually are from the Horde for the most part. Thrall has to rely on hoping that Sylvanas can control the organizations in her city which obviously did not work too well. I wouldn't say Varian is too much under Arthas' jurisdiction since for the most part the 2 kingdoms had little to do with each other after the second war but I guess if Varian paid a bit more attention to what was happening in Lordaeron then I guess he could of made a slight difference by attempting to help (or just boosted the Scourge more).

Playing an undead, I thought the Wrathgate event was great for multiple reasons. The fear in Arthas' voice when he believed he was being attacked by Sylvanas to the treachery of the RAS. When I saw the Forsaken attacking, I never felt more proud to be Forsaken. I was actually kind of disappointed when I realized it was a 'rogue element' of the Forsaken performing the attack.

I really don't see the actions of the RAS being much different than the goals of all of the Forsaken, except for the fact that the Forsaken are 'stuck' with the horde for gameplay reasons. I could easily have seen Sylvanas there leading the attack, as the alliance of the Forsaken to the Horde is only out of convenience and has more to do with who will not butcher them than who they get along with.

It would have been interesting if they pulled a Grobb in the sense that after a patch they had displaced an entire city's worth of NPCs to Orgrimmar. Unfortunately for the PCs, we would have been stuck on the "horde" side (regardless of our true allegiance. ).

Faction tension is really quite realistic.

Why does the average human hate the average orc? "'You killed my granpappy!"
Why does the average orc hate the average human? "Lokthar! You imprisoned and made us slaves!" Maybe "You imprisoned and made my dad a slave!" these days.

It's just like terrestrial territorial conflicts. We owned this bit of land 300 yrs ago, so it should be ours, regardless of the fact you've settled it and had generations raised there. And you only took it 300 yrs ago because you'd owned it 50 yrs before that. How many times did France and England invade each other?

At this point factional hatred is chicken and the egg. Both sides claim the other started it, neither really wants to let it go. Once emotion gets involved, good luck getting everything solved with diplomats. There will be a few on each side willing to work for peace and act peacefully. Nations might even act civilly on a large-scale level, but the citizens will be petty on an individual level almost every single time.

A larger threat can band them together for a time. But the instant one side thinks it can afford to stab the other in the back while still defeating the larger threat - stab, stab, stabbity, stab.

I firmly expect 3.3 will have some joint effort against Arthas which will also be vying for the upper hand to be ready the instance he's down.