Garithos had to die because he never truly lived.

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Thing is, will the lore ever directly dive into how wrong Anduin was on that or will we ever see the fate of Garrosh cause a stir in Anduin that will help him learn that sometimes bad guys are incapable of redemption? Staying tuned on that one.

EDIT: Another thing I don't like is that it paints him and the Alliance as Stupid Good. I'd probably be more inclined to accept Alliance showing mercy to their enemies, if it didn't come across as wasteful.

Hmm, while looking through model files, I think I've found another causality of orc fatigue. It seems like originally, Skyreach would've been under siege by the Iron Horde during the five man. Maybe Kargath was meant to be involved in the arakkoa/legion plot back when he was supposed to survive Highmaul?

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How do you kill that, which is only a plot device?

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"Rise like a Phoenix. Out of the ashes, seeking rather than vengeance, retribution"

I'd have preferred it over faerie dragons, fo' su'e. That entire thing just felt so... random. Like, it's a big enough step for faerie drakes to exist on Draenor to begin with, since there's never been a mention of an emerald dream on the planet (in fact, the arrakoa god bird somehow ended up interacting with Azeroth's emerald dream). But then you have to account for the faerie drakes somehow having a never-before mentioned or seen giant form. And the draenei had exhaustively integrated these creatures into their culture, something never seen or mentioned before. And it contradicts the schpiel of why the night elves don't have faerie drakes in their army any more, especially since the draenei aren't even interacting with their emerald dream.

It's a lot of stretching for a really dang arbitrary end goal.

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It's funny that we are talking about Garithos (which has nothing to do with 6.2, which is what this thread is about), because if I were to build Warcraft and Alliance lore, I'd use him, his legacy and his family a lot more.

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- Sorry for any typos; english's not my primary language.

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It would be cool to take some previously asshole Alliance characters and give them more depth and complexity, but that's more of a Horde thing I'm afraid.

The fairie dragons should have been explained better IMHO

As for the Draenei development, I think WoD was a half-wasted oppotunity.

While Shadowmoon questline set the bases for a complex culture composed of several interesting factions, Talador utterly failed to adress things as the Auchenai, the Sha'tari and their respective cities. Reading through quests of the area kills your brain: "kill this", "kill that", etc. And I'm not actually critisizing the objectives, but the quest text: no justifications, no interesting tidbits, no references to the ideologies or cultures.

I learned almost nothing about the denizens of Auchindoun and of Shattrath. The last one, specifically, was an absolute waste of time to design given how it ended being used (IMHO, it should have been a neutral capital, instead of Ashran camps).

Then you cross to Arak and... man, that's marvelous of worldbuilding. We learned so many, many things about Arakkoa that it surpasses Shadowmoon and Talador together. The avian creatures even got a short story which was well written and adds another layer to the game experience.

Though I guess I shouldn't be amazed about the love the Arakkoa received, as the zone designer was a fan of the race. Maybe Talador was designed by someone that simply didn't care enough.

That would have been cool. Orcs in general felt so wasted...

Though I believe the siege of Skyreach and Kargath's failure would have been the perfect justification for the Shattered Hand to leave Arak and serve as the enforcers of the Gorians.

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It could give the Alliance something of an internal conflict. Can't have that.

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"Rise like a Phoenix. Out of the ashes, seeking rather than vengeance, retribution"

Considering Talador is also where we get the dreadful Doomhammer storyline... yes, they didn't care.

I liked the idea of the Aunchindoun storyline. It works as a desperate defense story, but it also branches too much into just "go kill X there" quests, and indeed it doesn't any cover lore behind the place.

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I think the Doomhammer stuff is caused by gutting Gorgrond. They just didn't have enough time to give Doomhammer a place in Talador.

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"Rise like a Phoenix. Out of the ashes, seeking rather than vengeance, retribution"

Unsurprisingly, Talador and Gorgrond seem to be the worst offenders when it comes to stuff being cut. Spires of Arak probably holds third place since it looks as if they were planning on adding some heavy faction story involving the bullshit with the faction traitors but it seems like they cut it all and left that single, garbage quest dangling.

People say 'Daelin did nothing wrong' because history proved he was right. The Orcs never did change, some of them (Thrall, Saurfang, Etrigg) did but the majority - the younger ones at that - didn't and just went right back to KILL, MAIM, BURN whilst Warlords of Draenor is basically "The Orcs were always barbaric murderous dicks: The Expansion."

If you look at it from Daelin's perspective, it's easy to see why he acts how he does. The last thing the Alliance will have heard from the Orcs was them violently breaking out one of the Horde's mass murdering psychopaths before stealing a load of ships and fleeing. These being the same orcs who waged a genocidal war in which his son was killed. The ONLY indication he has that the Orcs have changed his his daughter's word. We - the audience - know that (at least at the time of The Frozen Throne) he is in the wrong, but too many people (mostly on the Story Forums/MMO-Champion) treat characters as if they have access to WoWpedia. Daelin was an antagonist, but he wasn't a villain.

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Years ago I talked to a guildy that ended up getting hired by the Blizzard creative development team (this was wrath era). This is how it kinda goes down:

Let’s say there’s a brand new zone that needs to be developed. Let’s call it Nu’Drak. Everyone is gathered into a meeting: writers, quest designers, artists, level designers, etc. The VPs have already done up a concept map of the zone and have some major bullet points for how they want the overall vision of the zone to be in terms of story elements, certain POIs, how it fits into the expansion, etc. If they have concept art at this point it’ll be shown as well. At this point the floor is basically opened up with “what do we want to do with this zone?” All of the major events are set to an tentative outline. Minor POIs, stories, and quest hubs are later just left to the various teams to toss in as they see fit (with approval from above). Those end up being pretty emergent, like the level designers coming up with this really cool looking area and the quest designers grooving off that, or vice versa, or any mix of creative iteration and emergent development. There’s no strict hierarchy – anyone can contribute however they please, but there is definitely a “design by committee” attitude.

Now I can’t imagine that’s still exactly how it is. If nothing else I’m sure they don’t shove 200+ devs into one room. I figure it sort of trickles down through the leads/seniors of each department. So yeah, it’s some heavy BS to say that the VPs are doing that much work in the trenches, especially since they oversee multiple IPs. But they do govern all the major elements, and I’m certain they have their own pet projects that they put more effort towards, but it’s mostly just the bones. All the meat is done by several other people, including the actual fleshing out of major storylines.

So if anything ends up being sub-par I imagine it’s due to poor seeding from the VPs, division and not everyone being on the same page, and/or just plain old creative blocks.

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And if you compare how Daelin was treated (by his own daughter) vs. how Grom or even Garrosh were treated by the characters, it's such a stark contrast.

Look at what the Celestials said of their decision to let Garrosh live or how far out their way everyone went to save Grom after he drank demon blood and murdered a bunch of Night Elves.

#Humanlivesmatter

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Except large-scale defensive urban warfare and picking fights he could win?

The guy picked a fight with a force he was utterly incapable of defending his own people against. The only reason that Theramore remained a nation after his idiotic interference is because he completely misunderstood the orcish intentions at the time. He provoked a war with an enemy whose capabilities he was not aware of, in a land he did not know, and got not just his own ass killed for his efforts, but got his entire fleet killed alongside him, along with any Theramorians he managed to recruit to his cause.

But no, it's totally unjustified that the alliance does not hold the guy in a state of honour after that. After all, he didn't like the horde. That's the only qualification for 'totally justified and completely great', isn't it?

If only Garithos was horde, then he could join the shining echelon of Dentarg, Cho'gall, Zul'jin, Rend, Maim, Gul'dan, Zuluhed, Teron Gorefiend, Fenris, Mogor and Tagar. Truly, the richest and most nuanced of characters.

Yeah, I know you're talking about Grom, Ner'zhul and Garona, but those are the minority of the old villain characters by far. If Garithos had been horde, chances are 80% that he would return out of nowhere to be killed again, 8% that he would get a sympathetic backstory, 9% that he'd become even worse, and 3% that he would just randomly be walking around as a killable character without even a quest to kill him.

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For some bizarre reason there are characters who have done worse but got no less than a slap on the wrist for it. It took Garrosh changing an entire universe in order for it to be acceptable to give him the death penalty.

Still more than Alliance. There's a reason why the Horde is widely regarded as the morally complex anti-hero faction.

You mean Genn Greymane never got any expanded backstory and motivation after Warcraft II and Day of the Dragon? Or Garithos didn't get his backstory revealed in some interview? (I'll admit that one was kinda weak though, but it was still there) Or Daelin... well, I guess Daelin always had a sympathetic backstory, so there's not really much to reveal there. Except for the dead son I guess.

Wow, Look at that piece of Widely Disliked Bad Writing! Truly, that means that Blizzard must immediately implement this particular piece of Bad Writing too!

If I was Hammerbrew, I would now be spamming this thread with gifs of laughing people.
Since I am me, I merely state the fact that my eyebrow is now raised.

Still, let's test your hypothesis. YO FORUM FOLKS! DO YOU THINK THAT THE HORDE IS A "morally complex anti-hero faction"?

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Genn-Who doesn't exist anymore, he's barely a footnote in the lore. Garithos and Daelin have backstories, yes, but they are not what the vocal majority remember about those characters. They remember the racism and bigotry and this is something that is also nurtured in the lore.

But Thrall would have killed him if not for Varian.

Hmm. An entire generation born in the interment camps, innocent of any wrong-doing, didn't come to think of humans as "Good Guys" after a human army attempted to wipe their fledgling nation-state off the map after they had just helped save the world. Gee, what a surprise.

Which is equally dumb and kind of out of character for Varian, he should be no less willing to want to enact the death penalty on Garrosh given that he has been shown as willing to kill him when they fought.

1. What piece of bad writing did I say I want implemented?

2. Well, it's not that hard to deduce. There's a wider breadth of spectrum when it comes to the morals of the Horde. You have the more morally good Tauren, the evil Forsaken, the Goblins who sit more in a gray matter, Blood Elves are shifting from being darker to going a lighter route, Orcs are attempting to do the same but are struggling which puts them in a solid gray area, and Trolls are emulating Thrall's philosophy of the Horde.

The Alliance doesn't nearly have that same amount of moral spectrum. It feels more like every single race is morally righteous, except Jaina who is treated as psycho by everyone else.

Sounds like more bad writing to pile on top of all the bad writing responsible for most of the grievances expressed itt.

Not really out of character. Why should he allow someone who's partially responsible for the Garry mess to kill him? It wasn't about saving Garrosh's life. It was about not letting Thrall get to do the killing.

Sasuke wouldn't have wanted Danzo to kill Itachi, even if he wanted Itachi to die.

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I forgot I was talking to mister Worgen Victim Complex here.

Yes, Grimtale. Genn Greymane never had any sort of role in Warcraft lore after Day of the Dragon. He has completely vanished from the aether, and has not been involved with a single thing since. Truly, he wishes he had as much development and involvement as Tagar Spinebreaker.

Your point being?

Yes, I remembered how Daelin's role in Tides of Darkness was all about his unjustified desire to kill the orcish race. Truly, the lore has only tried to further show how completely unsympathetic he was in every aspect.

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