Is there anything to suggest that Wrynn has anything against the Trolls, Tauren, and Blood Elfs? I mean, he despises the Orcs with a fiery passion and could never tolerate the Undead living in Lordaeron but what about the others? If the Horde were to be fractured, would the Alliance be cool with just destroying the Orcs and Undead and leaving the others to get on with life?

Yes, with Wrynn the frothing madman who makes Garrosh look mild, and the Dark Irons back in Ironforge (and a half-Dark Iron child as heir to the Bronzebeard's throne), I'm sure the Alliance had little in the way of leadership issues to worry about. *snicker* Of course, it may be that the kind of wanton belligerence that will follow is the path to victory. Alas, it spells a great defeat for the forces of good.

Yes. The 4th expansion: World of peacecraft

Not that they will, but this is the perfect setup for Blizz moving WoW away from being a rigid two-faction game to something more fluid. But they won't -- still, imagining the flamefests on the forums that any shakeup would cause is an amusing thought.

@Artificial

"...with Wrynn the frothing madman who makes Garrosh look mild..."

Really?

At best, they're on par with one another. Wrynn's had quite a few more steady moments than we've seen from Garrosh to this point, though.

But no, keep wailing away at that strawman, whatever makes you feel better.

I'm not in the beta, but from some of the transcripts of the dialogues I've seen, it seems they are at least **trying** to make Garrosh more three dimensional.

I sure hope they do the same with Varian. Blizzard gets an "F" for implementation of his return, and has so little development it allows people to claim he is some frothing racist.

Seeing Horde and Alliance storylines from TBC and (to a lesser extent) WOLK, it always felt like the Alliance gets shafted with compelling storylines that makes it seem like the Alliance reasons for the quests [I'm looking at you COT:Black Morass] were thrown in as afterthoughts.

Maybe this "the grass is greener" mentality, but I remember the LK quests of the concern of the direction the Horde was taking (fascistic orcs which Saurfang was concerned with, the contempt of the Forsaken for their allies) and wishing the Alliance quests had such compelling writing.

Now, personally I hope they make Varian heroic, not a jerk, but either way, I hope they make it believable and developed.

@Jeff (Not that one ^ ) -

Your question is related to the question I've been pondering regarding humans & trolls.

We know that in the original WarCraft: Orcs & Humans game, the orcs came through the Dark Portal in what is now called the Blasted Lands, and attacked the humans of the Kingdom of Stormwind.

At that time, Blizzard hadn't thought up the trolls yet (as far as we know). However, we know they've been there all along - we just didn't see them until WC2. After the Kingdom of Stormwind fell in WC1, Lordaeron became the center of human culture for both WC2 and WC3. Stormwind was rebuilt some time between the fall of Lordaeron and the launch of World of Warcraft, and regained it's position as the center of human culture.

Now, in WoW, Stormwind is very close to Stranglethorn Vale (with only Duskwood between Elwynn Forest and STV), the primary troll homeland. But, unlike the well-documented conflicts between the high elves and trolls in the northern part of the Eastern Kingdoms, I've seen nothing in the WoW lore about any conflicts between the humans of Stormwind and the trolls of Stranglethorn Vale. I've never seen even a hint of any kind of troll presence in Duskwood or Westfall — not even ancient, long-abandoned ruins. It would appear that the Gurubashi trolls were content to remain in STV.

So I'm going to have to guess that any hostility Varian Wrynn might harbor toward trolls is based entirely on the fact that they're allied with the orcs, and even then that hostility would seem only to apply to the Darkspear. There doesn't appear to be any kind of historical, racial enmity between Stormwind and trolls in general (unlike the elves and trolls). So it seems to me that if the Darkspear were to sever their ties with the Horde, and didn't deliberately bother humans, then Wrynn would likely be content to leave them be.

As to why (lorewise) we didn't hear from the trolls of STV in WC1, it sounds to me like there was still quite a lot of internal conflict between the various troll tribes at that time. They weren't unified, and no single tribe was large enough to initiate any kind of attack on Stormwind. In fact, the individual tribes were probably too busy protecting themselves from the other tribes to be concerned with the humans to the north. I do find it a bit puzzling that, when the Darkspear were driven from their lands in STV, they chose to move so far north that they came into conflict with Kul Tiras, rather than simply moving into Duskwood or Westfall, but again, those lands were probably already securely in human hands and they felt it safer to go around. It's not mentioned in the article, but I have to assume the Darkspear fled STV by boat, not overland.

Well, the entire concept of Human unity and Humans having kingdoms was based around their conquering troll territory.

Also, he stuck a big statue of a guy named Danath Trollmurderer in his front yard.

So there's probably some ill feeling there.

@MisterRik

Hostile contact between trolls and humans is a little more extensive than that. It's been covered a few times in KYL, but the exiled Quel'dorei of Quel'Thalas and the humans of Arathor formed an alliance against the Amani during the Troll Wars. It's how humans got mages and it predates the First War (Warcraft: Orcs and Humans) by about 2800 years.

http://www.wowwiki.com/The_Troll_Wars

Granted, as far as humans were probably concerned back then it may have been all "pointy-eared-guys against other pointy-eared-guys-with-tusks lolz" and the rest was /target focustarget pew pew for phat lewts.

Relative to the stereotypical human, Varian is frothing. Relative to the stereotypical orc, Garrosh is about average. It's clearly a double-standard, but make of that what you will...

@TR -

Yeah, I was familiar with all that. But I was talking specifically about the humans of Stormwind, which was clearly founded some centuries later. Thoradin untied all or most of the human tribes and then allied with the elves in the face of the troll threat (though apparently in self-defense, not in an effort at conquest). Thoradin established the first true human kingdom (Strom), but in time that kingdom splintered and the various factions moved away from Strom to form new kingdoms/city-states, one of which was Stormwind.

According to the WowWiki article you linked, the Gurubashi empire (in STV) had already fallen to civil war even before the elves and humans united against and defeated the Amani trolls. That suggests that at the time of Stormwind's founding, the Gurubashi had already been reduced to a bunch of squabbling tribes who were too busy with their own problems to bother the nearby humans.

Again, I point to the complete lack of physical evidence that the Gurubashi trolls ever expanded far out of STV. There is the Sunken Temple in Swamp of Sorrows, but I haven't discovered even a hint of troll ruins in Duskwood, Westfall, Elwynn, or Redridge Mountains. I'll concede there may have been something in what is now the Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes, but any evidence that may have been there was destroyed in the eruption of Blackrock Mountain. So after the Sunken Temple, we don't see any more troll ruins until the Badlands, where there are a few small, broken remains of troll architecture at the northern edge of the zone, (where those lower-level rock elementals hang out). We don't see any actual live trolls until we get into Khaz Modan (ice trolls in Coldridge Valley, Dun Morogh, as well as the trolls in Hinterlands, but these seem to be branches of the Amani, not the Gurubashi.

I'll concede the possibility that the humans of Stormwind simply did a remarkable job of eradicating any signs of prior troll presence in their territories, and it's not out of the realm of possibility that Stormwind City itself was built with stone scavenged from troll structures (not an uncommon practice in our own history).

@MisterRik

Ah, I see what you're saying and you have a point. I remember fewer Gurubashi-related quests than Amani and even the Stone of Tides chain had you trekking all the way to Hillsbrad Foothills to talk to an expert on troll relics. This implies Stormwind's people knowing little about trolls compared to their Arathi cousins. Kurzen's Compound is the only SW settlement that far south.

@Misterrik

Humans have had run ins with the Trolls of STV in the past. But the run ins are on par with a, "you strayed into my forest" affair.
Trolls for the most part stay to themselves. And unless they seek to occupy the same land, in the case of Quel'Thalas, the Trolls don't seem to go out of their way to start trouble.
In fact, if I recall correctly and I don't get to confused on the first wars time line. Blackhand goes to the Trolls and asks them to join the Horde in the First War, but Zul'jin turns them down, stating to the effect that the Trolls hold what they want and the Orcs war with the humans would give them nothing more. It wasn't until Doomhammer goes to Zul'jin, after saving him from capture, and tells him they are marching on Quel'Thalas that Zul'jin hops on board. That should be Second War timeline.

@amaxe

I'm inclined to agree with you about horde storylines in bc, but i think in wrath the alliance has some questlines that are at least as good as the horde's... things like recovering the ashbringer from a basement full of undead under utgarde keep and returning it to tirion, or killing thel'zan (our old friend inigo montoy) with help from bolvar... Oh, and tracking down thassarian for his sister, and then helping him kill prince valanar... i mostly play horde, and i really have to say, i dont think the horde got to have quite this much fun (except that one quest in bt where saurfang comes along and whirlwinds the bejeesus out of an undead horde... that was pretty much the business :P)