Child of the Elements
by David Bowers 
May 29th 2007 at 9:00AM
I finally finished the children's week quests on the alliance side, after being quite busy for most of the last week. It's interesting to note how different the draenei girl is from the blood elf that Elizabeth covered earlier. Far from a girl seeming fated to grow up to be a evil-doer of some kind, young Dornaa seems to be a child destined to be a kind and powerful shaman, deeply in touch with the elements.The Exodar's resident Naaru, named O'ros, seems very impressed with her and asks you to have her visit Farseer Nobundo, leader of draenei shamanism, upstairs. She and the Farseer have already met in a dream, apparently! Nobundo is astounded that the child should have such a natural connection to the elements, and says he will petition for her to stay in the Exodar and train under him after you return her to the orphanage. At the Caverns of Time, she is approached by the Wardens of Time (and saved by the great dragon Zaladormu) just like the blood elf orphan, but the feeling of this is quite different in her context, especially since she wants to befriend a dragon someday, not own one like the blood elf. It seems to me as if a great responsibility rests on her at some time in the future, not some great and evil destiny.
Does the difference between the Horde and Alliance orphans reinforce the thinking that the Horde really is generally evil (with a few who are good) while the Alliance is generally good (with a few who are evil)? Is that the balance we like? Does Blizzard need to provide more kind hordies and wicked allies?
(By the way, if you haven't yet done the Children's Week quests, today [the 29th] is
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Ryan D. May 29th 2007 9:17AM
It could be argued that perhaps the Blood Elves have a degree of evil, but I would suggest that thinking that the Blood Elf child from Children's Week is destined for evil is perhaps misinterpreting that.
Beyond that, the same unwillingness to see both sides of the coin is likely why so many servers are imbalanced, population-wise, towards the Alliance - no one wants to be the bad guy, of course, so hey, let's roll a pretty Night Elf or an insufferable Gnome.
The Horde isn't evil - it's mostly the tattered remains of a number of itinerant races who are banded together for their own defense and community in the light of the more "respectable" races who would sooner destroy them or use them for slave labor.
Duromiir May 29th 2007 9:16AM
This strike me more as a cultural/racial thing than a faction one.
Blood Elves are pretty evil, from what we see of them (vampirizing a naaru, for instance) whereas the Draenei can be sickeningly good. Obviously, there are always exceptions.
Blizz seems to have gone out of their way to blur the GvE aspects of the factions, starting in WC3. Mind you, I think the story works a lot better like that, not as "They're bad so we're gonna hit 'em! lawlz!"
Savok May 29th 2007 9:26AM
I've never understood the Horde = Evil thing.
Human politics are a mess of corruption, assassination and kidnapping.
The Night Elves being selfish little pricks went and made another World Tree, they are now paying the price.
The Gnomes actually managed to literally nuke themselves, mutating half their race.
And half the Draenei are ready to go on a genocidal purge of "evil" yesterday.
Meanwhile the Horde has the Orcs, who just went through hell ridding themselves of demonic influence, and are now reconnecting with their spiritual/not demonic past.
The Darkspear Trolls, who seem to spend most of their time preventing other Trolls from murdering everyone.
The Tauren, giant bovine hippies with flower picking as a racial talent, COME ON!
Sure the Forsaken want to kill everyone, but why not, they got screwed every which way by everyone. Plus they never seem to really act on it, seems to be a lot of posturing while cutting their dried up wrists and crying.
Blood Elves are Elves, if they weren't awful they wouldn't be Elves, not to mention the completely insane lore behind it all, file it under "Blizzard is full of idiots".
tuxthepenguin May 29th 2007 9:34AM
I was thinking the same thing until I got to the Dragon: if this Draeni child is "good" as they seem to mention, why do they want to kill her?
I honestly think that the next Warcraft is going to have a storyline with the Draeni. I'd like to see them come down from their literally holier-than-thou attitude.
I wonder if the Draeni are being slowly corrupted by demons (heck, they shamanistic and that led the orcs to demons).
On the other hand, I wonder if the reason that the BE was so "naturally" a paladin was if she has some connection to the light before her visit. That might explain a lot.
I just really hope Blizzard doesn't go back to their Horde = Evil base. I like the moral ambiguity and the downright mess everyone has.
Nibarg May 29th 2007 9:35AM
I'd just like to say that the guy who wrote that "Horde is evil" article is so unbelievably full of it, and as he has so obviously not played any of the Warcraft games outside of WoW, his half-baked opinion on the story really has no bearing on anything. If you can tell me that the Orcs are evil, with them spending their time trying to rebuild their civilization, weeding out the demonic corruption in their ranks (or using it to strike at other pockets of that corruption), all with a leader who *constantly* springs on any opportunity to make peace between the Horde and the Alliance and makes no secret of that desire... well, I'll tell you that you haven't been paying attention.
Ugkul May 29th 2007 9:48AM
I don't know about good or evil, but boy these kids are loaded. The orphan quests can net you quite a bit of gold (and very good Lower City Rep) for being a glorified tour guide.
By the way, the Draenai child sends a nicely written letter around a day after you turn in the quest for the pet.
mugginns May 29th 2007 9:58AM
Little does she know, when she hits 70 and tries to do arenas she'll be gimped beyond belief
Stay away little orphan, stay away!!!
sian May 29th 2007 10:00AM
I miss my orphan that pet is no replacement. It would be cool to bring them into a CoT story or something. They seem to have created some lore for the characters; it would be a shame not to put it to use.
For the good/evil thing. It seems to me like Blizzard want a bit of controversy on the subject. Make the horde have evil seeming races but get the lore to tell a differnt story. It's more interesting that way I guess.
Todd May 29th 2007 10:02AM
I think that simplifying it *is* possible if you realize that both sides are made up of many separate races and cultures.
The bulk of the Forsaken and Blood Elf culture is evil by our standards. The Forsaken are actively conspiring to create more undead (de-facto genocide) and the Blood Elves are painfully, brutally decadent.
The only equivalent to the same level of 'evil' on the alliance side are the gnomes. Every behavior exhibited in the quests/lore points towards them being amoral experimenters with no problems with using living subjects, creating mayhem, committing murder and abandoning allies to further their ends.
That said - the game lore supports the dwarf-gnome alliance, but I am still unsure it supports the Night Elves and Humans embracing them. Night Elves look human enough for racist humans to at least consider them to be equals or allies and the dwarves seem eager and loyal enough to support nearly any ally. People point towards the draenei being 'painfully good' but i'd put my money on the dwarves being the real heroes of the piece on the alliance side.
All of that said - the real 'good guys' of WOW are to me the Orcs, Darkspear Trolls and Tauren. The orcish embrace of the warlocks says more 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer' than 'we're still evil.' All three races have entire questlines about honorable and humbling behavior, doing the right thing even if it aids your alleged enemies.
Finally, there is to me no rational, believable reason for the Tauren/Orcs/Trolls to be allied with the Blood Elves or Forsaken.
Argent May 29th 2007 10:19AM
i think you can't approach either the horde as w hole or the alliance as a whole in absolute terms -- neither is fully good or fully evil. both have their flaws, both have their strengths. i think it's actually quite hard to apply universal labels to the various races that make up either faction, but if you did, you'd probably wind up using a sort of adaptation of the D&D alignment concept.
f.e. it's fairly easy to classify tauren and dreanei both as lawful good aligned -- they truly are forces of positive change for the betterment of everyone, regardless of faction.
nightelves i'd classify as true neutrals -- they may buy into a sort of notion of greater good, but are equally capable of just leaving that notion behind if the situation arises/changes (classic example: tyrande frees illidan.)
orcs are probably more along the lines of chaotic good -- observers of a morale code that might not exactly jibe well with the rule of laws set forth by others, they nevertheless seek to preserve and enhance their freedom (keep in mind that their oppressors include both human and demonkind)
now, the above (imo) are the fairly easy picks which all kinda traverse one starta of the alignment scale. most of the other races traverse multiple strata.
humans come in almost every flavor -- from lawful good (uther, anduin lothar) to chaotic evil (pre-DK arthas) and all stops in-between.
dwarves tend to scale in similar fashion, though it should be observed that the three dwarven clans roughly correspond to the three archetypes within alignment:
bronzebeard - good
wildhammer - neutral
dark iron - evil
i think you'll find some depth and diversity that extends from those basic archetypes into the different sub-headings, but by and large if you're going for a general look and feel, that would be it.
trolls are similar to the dwarven races in that regard -- they seem to come in almost all flavors, depending on what clan they are associated with. i'd say the tribes associated from the horde seem to range from chaotic good to lawful evil for the most part, but some trolls (zandelar) seem to rise above that and cover the stratas up to lawful good and some go straight down to the chaotic evil realm as well.
gnomes tend to be more on the neutral and chaotic side of things, and the same could be said of the forsaken. bloodelves -- well, so far, i haven't seen enough to make a truly final determination one way or the other, but of what i've seen so far, true neutral is about as high as they tend to reach. they are fairly solid in the neutral/chaotic sphere, with a strong penchant for chaotic evil (destroy creatures for the sake of drinking their magical essence? well, hard not to call it that way...)
if you break it right down in terms of GvE, alliance races tend to straddle both ends of the spectrum a bit more readily -- huamns from end to end, nightelves fairly close as well, with dwarves and gnomes having a high range of flexability as well. the dreanie seem the least diverse race and are also the most 'good' of the alliance.
horde races by and large are actually aligned more in less broad terms -- tauren and orcs being fairly good in nature, trolls being perhaps a bit more good than average, forsake a bit less and the bloodelves perhaps a bit more on the evil side of things.
again, this doesn't mean that 'alliance = good' and 'horde = evil' -- because chances are for every bloodelf who does some pretty wicked things, we can roll out a human counterpart who does much the same. both sides have the facility for good and evil within their own factions -- but how it overtly manifests itself is fairly different.
Terrant Nov 28th 2010 9:53PM
I simply think the Alliance and the Horde are too large organizations to be classified as "good" or "evil"; there's both among the various organizations and individuals that belong to either side.
Anyway, Lore always takes a back seat to game mechanics, right? *grin* If turning race/person X good/evil gives Blizzard another quest line/instance/expansion pack/etc., then it happens!
Argent May 29th 2007 10:22AM
(and yeah, i messed up the alignment use on the dwarves pretty bad. forgive me -- it's early and i'm still kinda waking up.)
Tridus May 29th 2007 10:26AM
The problem is that the Horde has three not-evil races, and then the two that were bolted. Most people consider creating plagues and slavery to be something less then good.
Most people also consider corrupt nobles and the Defias to be bad, but through quests you actively oppose those things. There is no Horde quest where you get to free the Naaru.
lee May 29th 2007 10:52AM
The Alliance is the imperialistic, Evil side of WoW.
Remember Alterac...
oomu May 29th 2007 11:04AM
no !
horde is GOOD (orc , tauren, troll : good people to be short)
but forsaken are a lot of drama and Blood elves are a lot misguided and very angry for a lot of reasons.
Alliance is GOOD , dwarf are beer-good, gnome are crazy-good, humans are mostly good, draenei are super-good, night elves are good
but humans are often corrupted and there are ugly politics often (did you do all the quests? :) ), Night elves have some old deamons trying to come back (you can read what the Chief Druid in Darnassus says. he is quite belligerent )
and so on.
people in blizzard lore are a lot of more interesting than simply GOOD or BAD. and they work hard to NOT make the horde "evil".
of all things, Thrall is a super-nice person.
you can say Horde is Drama, Alliance is Pretty. but things can be deceptive.
-
and you know, in the end, the Blood Elves played by us realize Kael'thas lost his way and we fight him.
MacKoroni May 29th 2007 11:11AM
Great, orphans week is ending today and the Shatt quest line is bugged for me, it took me 2 hours + to complete all the quests as it seemed end points were bugged. I completed all quests and can't turn it in, opened a ticket and apparently it's been commonly reported as bugged by others, haven't heard back from Blizz on it...guess I will have to wait until next year for my own buck-toothed willy. : /
Matt Rossi May 29th 2007 11:17AM
Why, exactly, do Orcs get a pass on the 'not evil' side of things? Humans in this game are *constantly* excoriated for their political manueverings, the presence of the Defias, etc etc... but humans are a race laboring to rebuild their world after alien invaders twice came through a dimensional portal and almost totally destroyed them, THEN they had to recover from a disease that not only kills the infected but raises them as walking corpses. And both the invaders and the diseased are now banded together in an organization that has as one of its objectives the creation of a disease that will be even MORE deadly than the last one!
If you were a human, would you be jumping for joy about the Horde? The same Horde (as far as you can tell) that served demons and slaughtered countless of your people, probably even family and friends? That destroyed six of the seven nations of humanity? In the real world it can take a hell of a lot less than the near destruction of all of a people to create lifelong enmity. Quite honestly, the fact that when given the opportunity to do so humans didn't slaughter every single orc they could get their hands on speaks a lot towards who's evil and who isn't.
Orcs massacred the Draenei and then tried to do the same to humans. Sure, they were 'blood drunk; when they did it. We're supposed to just be okay with that? The Alliance is evil for not going "Oh, well, since you're SORRY..."?
Orcs have done nothing to make up for what they did. Thrall's a great guy and I love playing my orc shammy, but lore wise the orcs are sitting in Orgrimmar while their allies the Forsaken plan the deaths of everyone, their new Blood Elf allies aren't much better, the Trolls still don't have a homeland... only the Tauren have made steps to reach out and change the world, by joining the Cenarion Circle and building Thunder Bluff to unify their people. Bloodscream's sacrifice was a powerful moment, but it doesn't erase what the orcs did and can never undo.
tuxthepenguin May 29th 2007 12:04PM
#15: Remember, the humans defeated the Horde and had them in camps. They broke free and RAN AWAY. They didn't stay to slug it out once more: they got the heck out of there.
Humans have as much to be pissed about as any of the races. Heck, the Blood Elves have everything the humans do, PLUS the fact that the humans betrayed them and left them to die.
Their glorious kingdom was attacked the Horde also, it was destroyed (and desecrated) by the Scourge. Then, in the midst of that war, the Human nations abandoned them to their fate.
In the lore, not a single race gets out as "good" or "evil." In fact, I think in WC3 Blizzard went through great pains to show that the Orcs and Humans were really the same in that regard.
I really see that the alliance and Horde have similiar breakdowns:
Human/Orc
Gnome/Troll
Forsaken/Gnome
Tauren/Night Elves
Blood Elves/Draeni
As much as the Draeni claim to be "good" they still will willfully exterminate those who go against the Naaru.
I honestly hope in the next expansion they give the Gnomes and Trolls a home. Or at least each server a world quest to gather materials to build the city. You know, we need 1 million rough stone, 1 million linen cloth, etc. That'd be nice.
Laurens Holst May 29th 2007 12:07PM
I really really hope to see her back in some future expansion, where she becomes part of the world lore.
~Grauw
Juliah May 29th 2007 12:17PM
You know, it would just be nice if they at least adjusted the calendar to state the **real** ending time. Accuracy for the win and all that.