RIP Garrosh Hellscream, Warchief, War Criminal

This is a spoilery sort of article if you haven't worked that out yet.

It is with a relieved heart that we of the Alliance lay former warchief of the Horde, Garrosh Hellscream, to rest. Or, not really to rest, but more to slowly rot away, exposed on the plains of Nagrand after having been electrocuted and squished in a talon of earth by his former mentor and noted orc shaman, Baldy.

Hellscream, a noted war criminal and warchief of the Horde who was overthrown in a recent revolt, had most recently escaped justice in Pandaria using a botched time travel mechanism and is presumed to be at least partly responsible for the recent attacks of the so-called "Iron Horde" on the Blasted Lands of Azeroth. It was these actions that brought together a rare, mixed task force of Alliance and Horde heroes to storm the Dark Portal, protect our world from this new threat, and bring Hellscream to justice.

Panda Postmortem

Yes, it's going to get ugly.

Warlords of Draenor is here. We're done with Pandaria and I don't sense that it's a place I'll be terribly excited to revisit, unfortunately. I was trying to piece together why that was the other day and realized that I missed something Blizzard did last time around, which was a full-on public post-mortem of their work in Cataclysm. It was refreshingly honest and it was good to see how the company assessed their own work.

Well. if Blizzard isn't going to do the job this time, somebody has to. So, let's give it a go! I'm not sure that this can be comprehensive because there's so many aspects of the game, but here's a few thoughts all the same.

The World
Pandaria looked very pretty, really. The zones had some distinctiveness while still seeming to be a part of the same world. That said, I didn't feel that the continent had any particularly memorable sites.

(Haha... I just Googled "Pandaria Map" so I could have a reference to look at and it showed me Pandaria, in the Chhattisgarth province of India.)

Actually, that's not entirely true, I was moved by the view of the Vale of Eternal Blossoms with its Mogu architecture and spray of manicured trees, and that was destroyed.  Because I like it better before the Alliance and Horde have a battle there, I specifically stopped running through the full story in Jade Forest with my alts just so I never reached that part where the statue of the Xu'lon gets covered in sha goop.

I think a bigger problem with the settings was that none of it felt essential to the story. Jade Forest and the Valley of the Four Winds had some personality to them, but Kun-Lai Summit, Townlong Steppes, and Dread Wastes felt like one long slog of progressively uninspired waste.  I remember reading, before Pandaria came out, that "Kun-Lai Summit is 4 times bigger than the largest zone in Cataclysm." But didn't you notice how much completely empty space was in the Kun Lai region? And naming the tallest mountain "Mt. Neverest" and then putting nothing of any essential importance even near it was both boring and uninspired.

The Taurajo Affair

If you ask me, Tauarajo doesn't look that different from what it did before it was sacked.

WARNING: Mild spoilers and serious Horde-bashing within

The Southern Barrens has turned into one of the most war-torn places in Azeroth. Unlike in Ashenvale, where the Horde is running rampant over Night Elf forces for the most part, The Alliance in the Barrens is fighting back.

(Ostensibly, this zone is an Alliance offensive. So I guess you could say the Horde is fighting back. But you get the point)

There is one key event in the Southern Barrens that supposedly shows the moral murkiness of war, that the Alliance is not purely "good" nor that the Horde is all "bad." The story is different, depending on which side of the conflict you are listening to, since we don't get to view the event itself.

But now I have played through both sides of this conflict, and I find the moral positions of the Alliance and the Horde much more solid than I was originally led to believe.

The event of course, is the sacking of the Taurajo.

The Horde and its Politics (part 2)

Naralie went on a brief quest on behalf of Tarren Mill that piqued my curiosity:

She was sent to Alterac Valley (the entrance anyway) for a meeting with Drek'thar about bringing the Frostwolf clan to the defense of Tarren Mill. The conversation that followed was very interesting.

Drek'thar refused to come defend the Forsaken, saying that for all the terible things he has done, he faces remorse and recrimination, but that the Forsaken feel nothing and that the atrocities they bring to the world are far worse than anything the old Horde could have done.

This is an orc who had done horrible things under the leadership of Gul'dan, was ostracized be the old Horde but became significant again, having reconnected with the elemental spirits as a shaman, and as one of the first mentors of Thrall.

Today, he does not speak for the ruling elite of the Horde. I bet that he and Garrosh would come to blows over issues of honor pretty darn quickly. But refusing to aid the Forsaken like this is a pretty severe rebuke of the Horde's status quo.

It's kind of exciting. Every clue I find about how the Horde is doing points to massive unrest if not a flat out civil war between the races of the Horde. I'm dying to see where this is all going to lead.

As a side note: It's been a little while since I was last in Alterac Valley, but I don't remember Drek'thar being blind or riding a wheelchair. In fact, I think he was pretty healthy and tried to murder me with a large stick.  Is this story progressing too?

The Horde and its Politics

There seems to be an awful lot of horde tricksiness afoot and I'm not quite sure entirely what to make of it yet. But I'm kinda a lore nerd so it's pretty fascinating This is a Spoiler heavy entry. Feel free to skip if if you don't want to know! But you'll have to follow the break to learn more!