Well, you are pretty much ignoring the whole Burning Legion and anything related to them. The Orcs who waged the wars in Warcraft I+II were under control by the Burning Legion. In Warcraft III the Orcs get rid of that influence, and battle the Legion at Hyjal - together with the Humans and Nightelfs. The battle demanded huge sacrifices from all the involved factions, but they acted as allies there. Only the cooperation of the Alliance and the Horde was able to defeat the Legion.

Fast forward to the wrathgate and you have a Burning Legion member (Varimathras) planting mistrust and hatred between the two factions - or rather getting Varian to ruin any cooperation. While we stopped the summoning in the battle for the Undercity, i think the whole incident was a success for the Burning Legion.

Past events have shown that it takes a joined effort to defeat a greater evil (Hyjal, Sunwell etc.), and it takes someone very shortsighted (hint: Varian) to forget about that. You don't call someone who basically saved your world at Hyjal "trash" or "a green-skinned aberration" - that's bad diplomacy.

Some places work best if there is not much of surveillance. Several western OECD countries have been embarassed when big companies under htier jurisdictions have been found to supply the vital machinery and technology to equip Libya with chemical weaponry - and received even export funding for doing so. It is always a horrible stretch to compare real world events to ingame events, but I just use this to illustrate the mechanism. Walk through Undercity - you can feel the despair and the hatred of the inhabitants, but it does not feel like a city where everything is under control. I agree that Sylvanas should have known that there was something under development, and that it could be used to give "death to all living", but not in these particular circumstances. And she probably was not willing to confront a potential ally over a suspicion.

As multiple people replied on the situation of the Apothecary district, I can only say that with the limited ways to convey a situation we can only speculate. What I can say is that the "New Plague" was officially developed as a Cure to the Plague. Let me see if I can find some quest evidence to it.


Internment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I might've used the word Internment Camp, I wasn't hinting at extermination camps in WWII. What I did hint towards were multiple examples of "concentrating a group of people who are in some way undesirable in one place, where they can be watched by those who incarcerated them". I don't want to make direct parallels with the real world to prevent just this. There are multiple examples of these sort of camps in history, just check the link, but I wanted it to be an abstract reference.

What bothers me, is "the group who wanted to kill or enslave every other race and pave roads with their skeletons". While this is partially true, it was a subgroup of demonically tainted orcs who did this. It is understandable to condemn every orc, but it is very much racist. I can't find concrete evidence, video game history is hard to quote when all I have is wowwiki, but I'm pretty sure that there are quite a few remarks about the 'greenskins'. I might have to check the novel "Cycle of Hatred" for it.

And while I agree with you that it might seem that it were mostly soldiers that were captured, this is not entirely true. Just look at Thrall, he was a baby when he was put in the internment camps. Talking about the internment camps, a snippet from when Thrall was fighting as a gladiator.

"Many others had bet on Thrall and lost money, and Blackmoore had invited them all to join in the punishment. Man after man entered the cell and vented his anger on the helpless orc before he finally, mercifully, lost consciousness. "

This is not an isolated incident. He was a 'pet orc'. And he was treated worse then a dog. There is no 'humanity'in that.

This is the crux of the discussion. Varian Wrynn doesn't get nuances. You defend his viewpoints, so you might sound like you miss some shades of grey too. It's not about pointing out facts in the lore where you are wrong, but I do interpret the happenings in a different way.

"King Varian Wrynn says: I've waited a long time for this, Thrall. For every time I was thrown into one of your damned arenas... for every time I killed a green-skinned aberration like you... I could only think of one thing."

Thrall has a history of working with humans. Look at Jaina. What happened to Thrall was also ten times worse as what happened to Wrynn (excluding the dual personalities, but that was due to a Black Dragon). Thrall SHOULD hate Wrynn more then Wrynn hates Thrall.

My 2 cents on the "evil Sylvanas" thing: I think they lifted Wrathgate straight from "Dr. Strangelove". That is, a high-ranking officer going mad/rogue, with access to a weapon that was created mostly for deterrence/strategic purposes, does something stupid and his commander is unable to stop him. To me, the connection between this new plague that kills absolutely anything and a nuclear weapon is obvious - and it puts a nice new spin in the tiresome "omg Sylvanas has a plague like that she must be evil amirite?" discussion that has been going on here, since I don't think the people advocating that view would say that any country possessing nuclear weapons has to be "evil".

Putress' speech also makes it quite obvious. "Did you think we had forgotten? Did you think we had forgiven?" clearly applies both to Arthas and to the Alliance, whose first reaction when coming into contact with the Forsaken was "they're like the Scourge, but smarter, therefore even more dangerous" (a line like that appears in one of the novels, but now I forget which). And there is nothing in his speech and/or in Sylvanas' reaction that indicates she condones what Putress did - although I agree that there's a lot of space for a novel to fill in the blanks.

Those who affirm that Sylvanas is dumb/incompetent because she didn't know/couldn't stop Putress are also grossly overestimating the degree of surveillance any leader can have over a large organization. History (and sociological analyses) are full of examples of how flimsy this usually is.

Here's a lore-related sidetrack to the Alliance vs. Horde business.

Just what's involved in a Dreadlord "dying" or having their physical form "killed" on Azeroth? Like Balnazzar in Stratholme or Varimathras after Wrathgate - the whole body disolving into bats and armour dropping on the ground business.

Is this a "Darn, someone cut off my phone call, let me redial" situation?
More lizard-like: "Sigh. Someone pulled my tail off again. Two more weeks to grow a new one."
Mr. Mxyzptlk: "Dang it, I cannot go back for 6 months."
Banishment: "I am barred from reappearing for 5 years."
Corporeal death: "I have to create a new body, or hijack another."

Is it a minor annoyance, where they'll be right back? Is it middling and involves just a pause before return? Or is it quite serious and they have to grow a new body, or displace the consciousness from one already existing?

I wonder, because we've had bats'n'armour at least twice, but at the end of Culling of Strat we have Mal'ganis pointedly leave and not allow his body to be bats'n'armoured. Is this a sign that if he had allowed that to occur it would have taken him too long to return?

Most likely the first option or the combination of it with another. When dreadlords die, they are 'sent back' into the Nether again, assuming a corporeal form might take some time.

I'm in agreement with Faldrath. You can't condemn a leader for approving her followers in developing a weapon intended for the protection of her people and the destruction of their enemies, the Scourge. I really don't understand the argument that because Sylvanas knew the plague was being developed, she's evil. Certainly no more than I think goblin engineers are inherently evil because they specialize in rockets and explosives. Sylvanas absolutely knew the plague was being developed. Whether she knew the details of how it was being tested is unclear--while many tests have been on captured enemy combatants, there certainly are examples of using it on random farmers. Again, without a novel based around her, that level of detail isn't really knowable.

Sure, she doesn't have a warm, fuzzy, teddy bear heart like Thrall sometimes exhibits, but under her command, the Forsaken have progressed from a cold, ruthless race who joined the Horde out of self-interest into a nearly fully integrated part of the Horde with common goals and challenges. Maybe not as much as the Tauren, but the Forsaken are newer and have a much less pleasant history to overcome. They've already come a long way as a people with her leadership.

Also, don't forget timelines here--with WoW being semi-linear, all those quests where you're testing the plague on random citizens of Lordaeron happened years (60 levels!) ago when the Forsaken were still pretty new at this. Sure, they're still testing and developing, but the testing is almost exclusively on enemy combatants now as far as I recall from early Northrend quests (e.g., bombing the ships off the coast of HF).

All they need is a portal and they can equivalent graveyard zerg a world? Ouch.

Have you been to Icecrown? There's hardly a ceasefire between the Alliance and Horde. Blizzard has intentionally stepped up rivalry and combat between the factions in this expansion, right up to the base of Icecrown Citadel, where you say we're supposed to be uniting against a common enemy. The only place there's a ceasefire is in Dalaran and other neutral towns; otherwise, it's fair game for the two factions to be at each others' throats.

It's pretty clear from that beach (Horde side) in the Fjord that the Horde and the Alliance are scarcely allies. At least on that part of the continent.

I wouldn't claim the Alliance were any more innocent than the Horde in upholding their cease-fire pre-Wrathgate. It Was The Orcs, Honest! and Mission: Plague This! clearly show that Horde were not the only ones causing trouble, albeit Alliance seem to use slightly more covert means of attack.