Setting aside the grammatical errors and rampant use of the term horde apologists (wow I haven't cringed that many times since I saw Scary Movie 2) this is horrible... I don't understand why people invest in another god damn tortured, whiny anti-hero.

The right thing to do in Lore for the Alliance would have been a successor to Lothar, somebody in that vein. Bolvar was headed in the right direction but he was always going to be a minor player.

I rolled Alliance with friends when I started, but when there were only a few of us left, we rerolled horde because the Alliance is full of incompetents, invalids and gutless, spineless cowards. Your average alliance player doesn't want to improve or learn new skills, will steal from his best friend and cares only for the loot. Which conveniently is reflected in the lore (helloooo house of Alterac).

I rerolled horde the day after I saw the state of Tarren Mill pvp on my server, gangs of 10 or so Alliance chasing down sole horde players. Every single time numbers were even remotely close the Alliance would lose horribly, complain of Horde using cheats/hacks (I still have the screenshots of this hilarity).

There was no lore to keep me on Alliance, no characters I was invested in, I've always liked the trolls and then tauren since WC3, so making the switch was easy.

I found like minded people and pvp success far beyond my expectations, a faction where 1 horde was better than 5 alliance players. Not just in pvp, but in all aspects of the game, I found that horde players were more driven, they were prouder, they never gave up. And you might hate the guy running the 2nd best raid/warsong gulch team on the faction and he certainly hates you back, but the respect is always there, when you overcome your grudges to dominate the shit out of Alterac Valley.

Blizz knew that Alliance (especially the humans) lacked a strong, male figurehead, so they brought in Varian to fill the void, but he's the last thing the Alliance needed right now because there's plenty of brooding anti-heroes in the game already. And the comics detailing his life and recent return to the world of the living were some of the worst I have ever read. When I see idiots buying into this bandaid lore I just feel sorry for them and the state of the world in which we play, you're saying it's ok for substandard lore and carbon copy characters by enabling Blizzard to get away with such cheap writing.

It only irks me so much, because I developed a similar character over 10 years ago in high school for a short story and I'm asking myself, did Blizzard employ a 13 year old to come up with Varian Wrynn?

Unbelievable. After all the clean facts that are listed in this article, Horde fanboy replies below still manage to either avoid the facts, or change them as to fit in their personal view. Unbelievable!

Well said Jingo.

The amount of stupidity in this post is amazing.

I have both horde and alliance at 80 and raid with guilds on both factions. Both on the same server as well (Two Accounts)

You are one of those people who think the two factions are played by completely different people, and you are a fool for thinking so.

Varian sucks.

/yawn

let me run this by you...

a portal opens in the Nevada Desert and a bunch of Aliens start pouring out, head for the nearest population center and start massacring the population.

a long war is fought between these Aliens and the collected races of planet Earth.

in the final battle of the war the Aliens are utterly defeated.

(oh and please note little hordies you were UTTERLY DEFEATED at Blackrock Mountain and that was when you were enpowered by demonic blood.)

what happens next ?

i'll tell you what happens next.

the same thing that almost happened in WoW but didn't because the WoW humans have fictitious virtues.

the Aliens would be exterminated and the only ones kept alive would be for study so we would know how to kill them easier should any more show up.

and we, just like the humans of Azeroth, would not give a toss what the Aliens justification was or what they 'used to be'.

Yes, Jingo - your Tarren Mill pvp stories are very pertinent to the lore debate.

Jingoism in action

@Miko

So?
...
...
...
...
...
If Varian thinks that he could easily extinguish the Horde *now*, he's dead wrong. So even with a survivalist attitude, preemptive and/or offensive war would be stupid. Moreover, surivalism isn't what is "right" it's only what is "necessary" if you believe it to be "necessary" for a certain cause. Otherwise, "right" is meaningless.
We know that the Horde isn't really alien in the sense that you describe. Orcs can even mate with Draenei and Humans; Tauren, Trolls and Blood Elves have been around before Humans; the Forsaken are Humans; and the naaru approve of the Horde. Varian should understand this by now, otherwise he's deaf and blind along with being stupid.
The truth is that if Varian was informed perfectly as to what the New Horde was like, he'd be "wrong" to want to war with them; instead, he'd build up defenses only to safeguard accidents from happening or extremists from attacking.
Varian isn't perfectly informed, but he should have enough information by now to do what is right for his people, which is to make demands of Thrall to keep the Horde in line and fight back if provoked, not to antagonize and be the aggressor. He's not too bad right now, but he isn't being at all smart.

'isn't really alien' i'm sorry ?
Orcs are the majority of the new Horde and they are from another planet - i fail to see how that 'isn't really alien'.

the rest of the horde consists of:

the remains of the Tauren who were almost extinct when Thrall met them in WC3.

the remains of one small tribe of jungle Trolls.

the remains of the high elves who survived the Scourge attack on Quel'Thalas and became blood elves (which is by no means all of the high elves)

and the Forsaken. who can't reproduce.

as for 'extinguish the Horde' the Alliance could roflstomp the Horde in open war and Thrall knows it which is why he has always wanted peace. if you want to argue against that go find the best numbers you can can from lore sources and compare each faction and i'll be here waiting.

i'll even start you off: there are approx 200,000 people in SW and 14,000-16,000 in Orgrimmar

less QQ moar Pew Pew...



did you really expect a different response?

"Orcs are the majority of the new Horde and they are from another planet - i fail to see how that 'isn't really alien'."

Let's see...they can speak the same language, they have close enough biology to look almost exactly the same as well as mate, they demonstrate the exact same levels of intelligence, values and sensitivities...
If you found out another group of humans, only colored green, lived on Mars, and they attacked Earth because they were controlled by implants created by evil robots, and then Earth forces defeat the Mars forces and the implants are removed and the rest of the Mars forces were put into internment camps long enough for people to verify that the other group of humans was pretty much the exact same race, would you consider that group alien?

"as for 'extinguish the Horde' the Alliance could roflstomp the Horde in open war and Thrall knows it which is why he has always wanted peace. if you want to argue against that go find the best numbers you can can from lore sources and compare each faction and i'll be here waiting."

Heh, not true. Thrall's a fruit, which is why he wants peace.
The Horde is quite 0bviously the Spartans, and the Alliance is the Persians. I'm reasonably sure the Horde would win. But if Varian is like Xerxes, and thinks he can win easily, it would explain a lot, if not enough.

only enlightened thing you've said so far.
'The Horde is quite 0bviously the Spartans'
quite right, they are quite obviously an entirely martial society.

funny how that doesn't tie in with the peace loving shamistic society they claim to have been before the legion came along or the peace wanting shamistic society they are trying to claim they are now eh ?

in Lord of the Clans Thrall makes quite clear he doesnt want to engage the Alliance in open war because he knows the Horde would lose but hey you believe whatever you want.

because if you can't read it and take it in in one place its highly likely you can't do the same in another so i'm just wasting my time.

"quite right, they are quite obviously an entirely martial society."

Obviously not entirely. And it's a bit unfortunate they aren't as extreme as the Spartans. They just have a much harder life than humans do, and it results in being better at combat.

"funny how that doesn't tie in with the peace loving shamistic society they claim to have been before the legion came along or the peace wanting shamistic society they are trying to claim they are now eh ?"

Um. How doesn't it? The orcs are tricked by demons into considering the draenei evil heretics, and gear up for war, and then wage war for many years. They obviously get pretty good at it. Also, obviously, they have an ever-increasing population of shamans, and dwindling population of warlocks.
So yeah. They used to be peace-loving, and want to be again. The fact that in the meantime they eke out an exist in Kalimdor and are required to be rather rough-and-ready doesn't change that at all.

"in Lord of the Clans Thrall makes quite clear he doesnt want to engage the Alliance in open war because he knows the Horde would lose but hey you believe whatever you want."

In Lord of the Clans, Thrall is young and has just broken free from captivity, and probably thinks humans won't let him and his kind live free.
He definitely doesn't want war now, for any reason. He's all shamany and diplomatic and whatnot. Tell yourself that he wouldn't lift a finger to help the Alliance if he could avoid it without consequence, and you'll be dead, completely wrong.

"so i'm just wasting my time."

You're wasting my time if you're choosing to interpret the actions and thoughts of young Thrall at one specific point in his life with the actions and thoughts of old Thrall.

I can totally understand Varian after all he is a human just like us.
while the perfect leader wouldn't be influenced by his emotions, emotions are one of the defining things that makes us human.
second what suprises me is that the other Alliance leaders don't have that much to say in fact they are invisible.
the Prophet Velen would be a good character to temper Varians agression and you can't underestimate the (diplomatic) power of the Naaru, King Magni he has quite some influence around the world. the Bronzebeard brothers all have their kingdoms and allies.
Tyrande still has her alliances in the spirits of the wild, and Mekkatorque has ehh neat machinery.
what the Alliance needs is more of a council of the races, poor Varian has/wants to do it all alone which is not right imo

You say all this like Horde is expected to bow down and kneel to the Alliance now that there is this sort of "truce". Fact is there still fighting and still enemies, old and new. Thrall cant tell his people to ignore what has happened to his people by the pink skins, nor is he going to ignore that his people actually did and still to this day try to do something about it. If anything, the margin was raised and diplomacy became an option, but you cant go from 1 generation of horde to the next, and think its all different now.

We're still enemies, simply put.

So Alliance is a bunch of cowards, ok...
...Horde claims "we're good now, we swear!" and we're cowards...
...oh well.