Faction Leaders and why you should hate them

Thrall is a noble character, and I guess pretty much everyone who plays Horde agree that he is a good and honorable leader. The other leaders in the Horde (Cairne, Sylvanas, Vol’jin, and that blood elf guy) are not nearly as important.

Alliance on the other hand had a distinct lack of notable leaders. Tyrande Whisperwind is known from Warcraft III, but she doesn’t make much noise; the human leader was a kid counseled by Onyxia – go figure; Magni Bronzebeard stand in his room and don’t do much; the gnome king was a king in exile; and no one cares about the blue space goats.

Overall the Horde was considered noble and misunderstood, while the Alliance was just greedy and corrupt.

In the Burning Crusade the Horde and Alliance worked together to fight back the Burning Legion. They became pals, shared the city of Shattrath in peace, and all was flowers and ponies. Some people liked that, most people didn’t. After all, this was World of WARcraft.

Then came Wrath of the Lich King and all that did a 180.

In comes Varian Wrynn, long lost human king and badass warrior with an attitude. Blizzard wanted to “go back to its roots” with war and… stuff. What should be painfully obvious is that the lead designers at Blizzard called down to lore department and ordered a “Badass human king with an attitude, sporting really cool armor and has a natural hatred for the Horde so all this teamwork can never happen again. Someone the Alliance people can look up to like the Horde do to Thrall. Create some background lore for him. On my desk at lunch.” And thus Varian Wrynn was manufactured to exact specifications.

Not that Horde was saved such rampant changes with no regard to past history. Thrall was noble, just, awesome, and brought respect and honor to the Horde, but he didn’t fit the profile any longer. Now they needed someone reckless, savage, slightly mentally disturbed and so full of sh*t that no one could identify with him. In short, they needed Garrosh Hellscream.

In the Burning Crusade we found Garrosh sitting and sobbing beside a fire in Nagrand. After a long quest chain and a personal visit by Thrall he is convinced that his father was not a total douchebag after all, and gains some new strength and will. The next time we see him he wants to charge into the arms of Arthas, despite all common sense. After fighting Thrall openly (seems like a nice guy) he is then named general for the Horde forces in Northrend. Garrosh went from whimpering by a fire to “ZUG ZUG! I KEEL YOU!” against the entire Alliance faster than you can say “lore lol”. If there is one more suited for command I don’t know him.

Events such as Wrathgate, the following battle of Undercity, Horde ambushing the Alliance in Icecrown and the meeting in Violet Citadel are just topping of the cake. With these two stupid leaders in charge of armed forces there would be war no matter what. It is painfully obvious what Blizzard wants, and they didn’t hesitate in doing a complete turnaround from their previous ideas of teamwork.

I’m not against a war in WoW – far from it – but I really despise such shallow and quick changes to make it so. Varian got some substance in that he was captured by the Horde, but it’s not much. Garrosh is a shallow as a leaf of paper and seems to have tasted a bit too much of the demon blood to be good. As a player you can’t really identify with any of them, making all their decisions to further the conflict seem stupid. You can’t respect stupid leaders.