I really like Garrosh now. Looking back at Burning Crusade, even when he was being a stupid whiner, Greatmother Geyah said that deep down, he was a wise leader. And at this point, I think that's true. He's been through some extremely rough spots, just because he's never led anything on this scale before. But in general, he wants what's best for his people. And he's hardly the most trigger-happy person in the game. Y'know who's REALLY trigger happy?

Night Elves.

Bear with me on this for just a second. This struck me while I was doing quests for the Cenarian Expedition in Zangarmarsh on my alt yesterday. Watcher Leesa'oh asked me to get samples from Ogres in the Hewn Bog. I had to kill these ogres to get the samples. In fact, I wound up murdering about twenty. Before you say 'But they were deforesting the marsh!', know that Leesa'oh didn't even know why it was called 'Hewn Bog'. She had no idea what the ogres were doing. She just wanted you to kill ogres.

So this got me thinking. I remembered back to Warcraft III, where the Night Elves make first contact with the Orcs. Grom had been sent into the forest to harvest lumber so the Orcs could build a city. Kalimdor was their Promised Land, and they wanted a place to settle down and build a city to shelter their elders and young. Enter the Night Elves. Several scouts run into the Orcish expedition, and their first reaction is, quote, 'You were right, sisters. These greenskins have no respect for life. Slay them all, in Elune's name!'

Sorry, my Irony Indicator just exploded. There is no race in WoW other than the Night Elves that 'grows' buildings with druidic magic (and even they don't do it for all of them). Even the Tauren, who at this point worked very closely with the Night Elves, would've had to cut down trees to build the support beams for one of their tents. They are very familiar, at this point, with the concept of cutting down a tree to build a house. So the first thing these 'respecters of life' do when they make first contact with a newer race that also is not enlightened about better ways to build things is brutally murder the new people's women and children. They never open talks or negotiation. They just start killing.

When humans move in along with the orcs, they don't open talks with them either. They kill them too. It's only when Archimonde is beating down their door that they even consider teaming up with the Orcs and Humans, who, just for the record, managed to set aside their differences pretty much as soon as they were asked to by Medivh, and this was after centuries of bloody, destructive conflict, as well as racism on both sides in the years that had followed. The Night Elves had never met any of them. But still, they had trouble accepting the fact that maybe they SHOULDN'T kill them all. During the Frozen Throne, we watch a elven woman go totally insane over trying to kill one specific person, even after that person attempts to (in his eyes) make up for those crimes tenfold. She even leaves Tyrande to be destroyed by the Scourge over it. In World of Warcraft, we see that the Orc/Elf situation hasn't improved at all, despite the fact that the Night Elves should have great ties to the Horde, as they are long-standing allies of the Tauren. Instead of allowing the Orcs to cut down a few trees and build a settlement in a lush region where their people can thrive, they force Thrall to settle in a desert if he wants to maintain the peace. In a DESERT. After wrongly attacking both the Horde and the Alliance, and wrongly butchering everything from high-ranking Paladins to Orc grunts and peons, they won't even let the Orcs have a sliver of fertile Kalimdor territory to make amends. And they - surprise! - try to kill the Orcs who stay in Ashenvale.

I started to like Garrosh when I first leveled my Tauren Sunwalker alt. Now that I've thought about this, it makes me like him even more. I fought in his war to rid Ashenvale of the Night Elves, and I will fight in his righteous crusade until we tear down the city of Darnassus itself!

Because these filthy purple-skins have no respect for life.