Much as I’m enjoying my European Politics of the 19th century class, this post has nothing to do with that. Rather, it’s about the in-game politics.
Thanks to PC Gamer UK, it has essentially been confirmed that Thrall is stepping down as leader of the Horde to go save the world (Guardian of Tirisfal or not, what do you expect the world’s most powerful shaman to do when everything goes to hell?) and the rather bloodthirsty Garrosh is replacing him.
So here’s a shocker.
Nobody likes Garrosh.
There is a ton of opposition to the idea of having Garrosh lead the horde, and this is based entirely on how he’s acting now (racist douchebag).
In case you missed it, Garrosh has come up with a rather unpopular little law. Essentially, all non-orcs/tauren are being banned from the center of Orgrimmar, as he considers only those two races strong enough to properly guard the capital.
Elves, trolls, goblins, undead… y’all suck!
Gee, thanks Garrosh. After all the trolls have done for you…
Needless to say, a lot of players are against this change.
So let’s talk ramifications here.
First off, why orcs AND tauren, not just orcs? If the leak about the assassination of Cairne Bloodhoof is true, why are the tauren still trusted? Why would the tauren people continue standing by Garrosh if he’s behind the death of their leader? Would Cairne’s son really take his father’s death that lightly?
More importantly, do the tauren know? Were they duped? And perhaps most frightening of all, if they do know, does Baine approve? (Baine being Cairne’s son.)
Of course, if the assassination is not true, then why would Cairne simply stand by as this racial segregation takes place? Would Vol’jin? Or do they not care as they don’t live there anymore? Bear in mind STV was the original home of the Darkspear, and that zone is being changed the most.
No matter which way you cut it, somewhere, somehow, there’s going to be a major split in the horde.
But enough of that. Let’s talk about what we do know, Garrosh’s leadership.
Be honest here. Why do you disapprove of his leadership? Is it because he is bloodthirsty without reason? A huge jerk? An unnecessary warmonger?
Are any of those traits a bad thing for a Warchief to have?
Wrynnis disliked by many due to how eager he is to engage the horde in all out war. Then again, he has more than enough reason to, having lived the life he has. He has every reason to despise the horde, every reason to want to destroy them all.
What personal grievances does Garrosh have? What has the alliance done to him? The guy’s been in Outland, completely cut off from Azeroth for most of his life. What possible reason does he have to hate the alliance?
Well, he really doesn’t have a reason. He just hates. Maybe a gnome stole his lunch money once.
Try an experiment. Take one of your horde characters, or make one if you don’t have one. Doesn’t matter what server. Go to a major city, and type in trade chat “Hi, I just rerolled/faction transferred from alliance!”
Note the rage. Note the hate. Note the complete lack of reason for this hatred.
Would not Garrosh be the perfect leader for this group?
I suppose it has to do with what one’s ideals for a Warchief are. The ideals for a King are pretty simple. A leader. Someone wise, someone respectable in command who always has his people’s wants and needs at heart.
Is that what a Warchief is?
In my eyes, the Warchief is not a politician. he’s not even the primary representative of his people. You want wisdom? Turn to the wise elders. You want war? You want unrepentant retribution? That’s where the warchief steps in.
The Warchief is not the king. He is not the end all, be all leader of his people. He is the military leader. He should be feared, respected.
To borrow a quote from a commenter on wow.com, the Warchief should be regarded in a similar fashion to how one would regard a large, hungry bear.
Consider the division of power in the American political system. The executive branch, that is, the President, can make many decisions, can make many laws. But he is not an absolute ruler. The legislative branch, the judicial branch, they are not subject to his rule.
He could say “alright, we’re going to war with [insert nation here]“, but the country does not actually go to war until everyone else in power says “okay”.
Nothing against Thrall, he’s a great political leader. But his raw power, his vigor, is somewhat lacking for someone who should be the supreme commander of the armed forces.
To borrow, again, from the same commenter on wow.com, sometimes I really wish Thrall would just say “Screw it. Stormwind burns.”
To be honest, I suspect the same thing could be said how Alliance would greet a faction/reroll transfer.
Part of me says bring back the war in warcraft, but part of me adores Thrall because he seems to be a good leader and cares for his people. The epic questline to get Friendly with the Mag’har is epic!
Of course, I don’t really approve of Garrosh either, partly because as an orc who came to outlands to help his people and he whined and moaned and was a big wussy for so long until I did all the work, I thing he’s a jerk.
BUT, I suspect there might be a twist happening prior to Cataclysm.
We’ll see.
And we don’t let the trolls in the center of the city because they smell. Bad.
He is simply stupid. The worsest case on n00b.
High Overlord Saurfang says: We are surrounded … Our enemies press in from all sides, young Hellscream. The Scourge descends like locusts from the north. The Alliance holds the only secure shipping lane in this region and even that is at risk of being lost to those dreaded mists. Our only viable port for resupply is held by the Forsaken on the other side of this blasted continent! Anything our zeppelins cannot haul must be brought in by ship and travel the length of Northrend to reach us.
Garrosh Hellscream says: Shipping lanes … supplies … You bore me to death! We need nothing more than the warrior spirit of the Horde, Saurfang! Now that we are firmly entrenched in this frozen wasteland, nothing shall stop us!
High Overlord Saurfang says: Siege engines, ammunition, heavy armor … How do you propose to shatter the walls of Icecrown without those?
Garrosh Hellscream says: Propose? I will show you what I propose!
Garrosh Hellscream says: There… Now we now have a shipping lane. And just for good measure…
High Overlord Saurfang says: So the prodigal son has spoken! Your father’s blood runs strong in you, Hellscream. Impatient as always… Impatient and reckless. You rush headlong into all-out war without a thought of the consequences.
Garrosh Hellscream says: Do not speak to me of consequences, old one.
High Overlord Saurfang says: I drank of the same blood your father did, Garrosh. Mannoroth’s cursed venom pumped through my veins as well. I drove my weapons into the bodies and minds of my enemies. And while Grom died a glorious death – freeing us all from the blood curse – he could not wipe away the terrible memory of our past. His act could not erase the horrors we committed.
High Overlord Saurfang says: The winter after the curse was lifted, hundreds of veteran orcs like me were lost to despair. Our minds were finally free, yes… Free to relive all of the unthinkable acts that we had performed under the Legion’s influence.
High Overlord Saurfang says: I think it was the sounds of the draenei children that unnerved most of them… You never forget… Have you ever been to Jaggedswine Farm? When the swine are of age for the slaughter… It’s that sound. The sound of the swine being killed… It resonates the loudest. Those are hard times for us older veterans.
Garrosh Hellscream says: But surely you cannot think that those children were born into innocence? They would have grown up and taken arms against us!
High Overlord Saurfang says: I am not speaking solely of the children of our enemies…
High Overlord Saurfang says: I won’t let you take us down that dark path again, young Hellscream. I’ll kill you myself before that day comes…
Garrosh Hellscream says: How have you managed to survive for so long, Saurfang? Not fallen victim to your own memories?
High Overlord Saurfang says: I don’t eat pork…
If he was a warmonger, I’d dislike that. But, I could at least see him as promoting the interests of the Horde. A winnable war might help us. However he’s so wildly aggressive and so incapable of tactics or strategy or even self-control, that he would likely lead the Horde to a war which we cannot win, or at least not without losing too many to make it worth it.
As leah said below, he is indeed overcompensating.
He replaces things like strategical thinking with raw aggression, which I still think is a good thing for a Warchief to have.
There needs to be somebody willing to try and kill the king of stormwind in the heart of friggin Dalaran.
Leave the strategy to generals.
No good leader should ever sacrifice strategical thinking for raw aggression. Even for Warchief.
Sure, there should be a healthy balance, but ST > RA.
Just ask Napoleon. Or Adolf “Two Fronts Aren’t Actually Better Than One” Hitler. Or go back even further… when armies/empires/whatever get overly ambitious at the cost of the strategical or tactical advantage, they lose. They fall apart.
Thrall may lack the aggression, but Garrosh seems to lack any sense of the bigger picture.
I think Garrosh has more of an “at any cost” mentality than Thrall, which is a good thing in a warchief. There are times in states of conflict where hard decisions have to be made without sentimentality getting in the way,
The problem is we’re not really certain what his goal is that he’s willing to reach at that cost. So far it seems like he wants to lead orcs (and maybe tauren) to ultimate supremacy of Azeroth.
That’s not a goal my character is really willing to get behind. Mostly because he’s not included in that ruling class. Then it would be different. =)
Not sure if this fits into the theme of the post, or not, but I think there’s plenty of “War” in Warcraft. The Burning Legion is still out there. There’s Deathwing coming back to stir things up in Cataclysm. So yeah, what we need right now is more interfaction strife!
I recently swapped over to a PVE server. Ironically, I’m doing more PvP in Battlegrounds than ever before, and seriously catching the bug. But levelling, I absolutely love being able to run a quest without some geared out 13 year old 20 levels above me swooping in and displaying his badass-osity by ganking the little Alliance mage.
While I was leveling, on more than one occasion, I ran into Horde running through the same area, on their version of the same quest, and since no one was flagged PvP, jumped in and helped them. One one occasion, we hooked up with a Tauran warrior, helped him kill the quest NPC, then waited around for the respawn to finish it ourselves. It was cooperation, and it felt good.
I can remember questing in Stranglethorne, and running into the same orc hunter about 3 days in a row. We waved, and went about our business.
Frankly, I wish the game would allow cross-faction partying.
I played FFXI for more than five years before coming to WoW, so the whole “faction” idea still kind of boggles me. (“What do you mean I can’t even /talk/ to 50% of the playerbase?!”) Part of me thinks there really should be better ways to communicate with and work with the other side, though part of me thinks the idea of not being able to is kind of sort of cool.
“Maybe a gnome stole his lunch money once.”
Not just once, I drop by for his lunch money nearly every day.
His Mum packs him and awesome bacon and egg toasted sandwich too…
Like stealing candy from a baby…
Seconded. I even stole his girlfriend, then dumped her after one date. I made her pay for me, of course.
“However he’s so wildly aggressive and so incapable of tactics or strategy or even self-control, that he would likely lead the Horde to a war which we cannot win, or at least not without losing too many to make it worth it.”
This. I’ve already turned my Hordelings Alliance – at the very least, Varian Wrynn has very little claim over the draenei or gnomes. Garrosh and Varian are both fools who put their own needs before their people’s, which is why I hate them both.
About the experiment you propose…are you from a server where the Trade channel *isn’t* one small step above Barrens chat? From what I’ve seen, Trade isn’t exactly the best place to go to gauge the feel for a faction. A more realistic experiment might be to /say something in front of the auction house mailbox. (You’re right that Garrosh would probably be good at leading a band of your average PvPers, though. To the degree that such a group can be led, of course.)
Also, in point of fact, the Warchief is the closest thing to an all-purpose leader the Horde has. There isn’t a President of the Horde or any other peacetime authority except for the various factional leaders; there’s just the Warchief. That’s how the Horde is built. As a matter of fact, the current Warchief, Thrall, has spent the majority of his reign trying to maintain the peace with the Alliance. I think he would disagree with you that the Warchief’s only job is to be in charge of war.
The horde is constructed in the same way a tribe is. While yes, technically, the chief is in charge, it’s really in name only. It’s the elders, the old wise ones, who everyone, chief included, go to for guidance.
This wasn’t really true for the demon controlled orcs, but other than that small hiccup, that’s the way orc, tauren, and many troll societies work.
On alliance rerolls: everyone who has admitted to being a former alliance is met with two reactions: a “welcome to the better faction” and a “gtfo stinking alliance.”
The latter reaction is BY FAR the dominant one, and this is true for my entire battlegroup.
Though yeah, that is primarily a cross-section of PvPers.
For all that you get that response in trade chat, take into account the aforementioned WoW.com article. People aren’t commenting on the big story reveals behind the two new races: they’re leaving messages by the hundreds, almost unanimously spewing vitriol at the two lines on Garrosh.
Both Varian and Garrosh smack a little too much of Arthas and his single minded obsession. and we all know where it led him.
neither would make a good leader and while Varian might possibly have slightly more of an excuse to despise the horde, lets be perfectly honest here – the major reason he ended up as he did was not becasue of the horde, it was because if his very own inability to control his government and gypping defias out of their pay. He…caused his own downfall.
As for Garrosh, well – overcompensating much?
P.S. Trolls were alliance of the Orcs before Taurens were even introduced into the lore. for Garrosh to remove them from the center of Ogrimmar? Varian won’t need to fight the horde, it will destroy itself from within, as long as Garrosh is allowed free reign. I find it difficult to believe, that Thrall, knowing Garrosh as he does, would allow that to happen. it would be extremely out of character.
*Warning Totally not WoW related”
“Consider the division of power in the American political system. The executive branch, that is, the President, can make many decisions, can make many laws. But he is not an absolute ruler. The legislative branch, the judicial branch, they are not subject to his rule.”
Actually all I’ve ever read/learned about American Politics implies that the Executive Branch was just that, Executing (performing, carrying out, enforcing) Laws created by the Legislative branch and interpreted by the Judicial branch. Truman, Eisenhower and FDR are all known for using the custom of sending “suggestions” up to Capitol Hill, this has since become a misused policy that has resulted in the situation that is prevalent in today’s politics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order_%28United_States%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_States_Constitution#Section_1:_President_and_Vice_President
Like has been said above, I don’t generally like Garrosh because he’s impulsive and about as subtle as a … tauren in a china shop? Maybe the horde and alliance do have irresolvable differences and a renewed war between them is inevitable. It’s still not a wise way to go about it to rant and rave like a lunatic, then shut your eyes and charge. Varian is the same way, *plus* he has a loony haircut. I think I like him even less.
But, it does seem bizarre to be working alongside each other in Outland and Northrend, and then to be ganked repeatedly by the other side the instant your lowbie goes outdoors. If we’re not at war right now, why is there so much murder going on in Hillsbrad and STV?
I don’t think it’s out of character for Thrall to let Garrosh take over, it’s not like he’s done anything good for the Horde since the end of WC3. He’s too delightfully naive (or stupid, take your pick). At the end of WC3, he had it pretty good. He had gotten his people out of the internment camps to a new continent, made alliances with the trolls and tauren, and become friends with an influential Alliance figure (Jaina, who even goes against her own father to defend him).
So what does he then do? Does nothing to stop the Horde from expanding into Alliance lands, particularly the Nelfs. Makes an alliance with a group occupying Alliance lands who are hellbent on destroying humanity (and secretly everyone living; I can understand forgiving him for missing this, but personally I don’t). Later makes an alliance with a magic-addicted race that’s just left the Alliance, is secretly torturing a being of pure light, and whose leader has allied with the Burning Legion (somewhat retconned since I think Blizzard realized the Horde was actually becoming evil, but still a naive rookie mistake by Thrall imo).
Bottom line is, Thrall could have sat back, enjoyed rapprochement with the Alliance and proven that the orcs (invading, alien race that they are) desired to live on their new home of Azeroth peacefully. Instead pretty much everything he’s done looks threatening to the Alliance, and he wields so little actual influence and power that he couldn’t stop his people from making things even worse. He had all the goodwill in the world and squandered it. Because Thrall ruined the chance for peace, there’s going to be war, and it may as well be overseen by someone who has the stomach for it.
Thrall struggles. Jaina struggles, in a different way. As we’ve seen, Saurfang struggles. Garrosh used to struggle, but now he’s just become a big jerk. Make him feel pressured to live up to the name of his father. Make him blame the alliance for legitimate grievances. Show conflicting loyalties tearing him apart. Have him deal with questions of identity. And then his heavy-handedness can be seen as more of a defense mechanism, or as an overly traditional approach to the Horde spirit, or a misinterpretation of a warrior’s duty, or a hotheaded desire to prove himself. Right now he has no qualities befitting a chieftain. Warchief, yes, but Thrall doesn’t WANT war … appointing Garrosh as a successor doesn’t make any sense.
I’m not saying that the cross-faction hatred is bad. Nor even that warmongering is bad. But if you’re going to have Garrosh upstage Cairne, Vol’jin, and Sylvanas (who’ve done relatively little lorewise up to now), at least make him more interesting than your typical adolescent in a BG with caps lock on. I’m getting sick of the one-dimensionality.
I assume it goes like this:
Thrall: Hey I’m off to save the world, want to be Warchief, Saurfang?
Saurfang: No… I don’t think I’d be a good fit. I’m not wise like you, Thrall.
Thrall: A wise man knows how much he does not know.
Saurfang: Well put, unfortunately I still have to decline.
Thrall: Okay then. Garrosh, you’re in charge.
Garrosh: F@%$ YEAH.
Saurfang: Oh shi-
Прикалываетесь чтоли, серьезные люди такого писать не будут.