hey so i’ve always been a staunch believer in still being able to love a character without condoning their actions, but i’ve always been curious of what your thoughts are on garrosh’s bombing of theramore? do you think it was as heinous of an act as it’s made to be in the lore, considering all citizens were evacuated?

swampgallows:

it’s kind of funny/stunning to me that people care about my opinion on this stuff… im really flattered actually!!! haha i just feel like “oh, you’re actually asking me to talk about Garrosh? well, by all means…”

I can understand the logistics of wanting to take out Theramore. Northwatch Hold is an extension of the Alliance forces troubling the east coast of Kalimdor, which are stationed at the stronghold of Theramore. Northwatch Hold and the humans there have been putting pressure on the orcs for years, and the trolls in the neighboring isles ages before that. Sometimes people forget, I think, that the humans and the trolls have been at war longer than Thrall’s Horde had even existed. Some of your first quests as a Horde character starting in Durotar (back when the tauren, trolls, and orcs all started in the Valley of Trials and were directly funneled into the Barrens, resulting in the notorious Barrens Chat of yore) are to combat the units stationed at Northwatch. And, unfortunately despite Jaina’s efforts, many of the humans of eastern Kalimdor still sought to drive the Horde out, so it was still a matter of the Horde defending their new homes.

If you visit Cataclysm’s Theramore, there is a lot of talk of …not necessarily mutiny, but a budding kind of nationalism and yearning to “return to the old ways”. Just as the orcs who were loyal to Garrosh were itching to return to the version of the Horde that preceded Thrall’s, there were plenty of humans sharpening their blades and talking about “the good old days”. There is even a questline on the Alliance side in Theramore to expose these deserters. Traitors Among Us is one of the first quests you complete. Morgaledh quotes some of the “deserter” NPCs in the WoWhead comments, while adding their own echoed sentiments:

“These people will know Admiral Proudmoore for the true hero he was”

“You can’t stop us from exposing the truth about Jaina’s cowardice”

“It’s people like you who weaken the Alliance and invite the Horde to take away all we’ve fought for”

I’ve done this quest on many characters over many years, and I completely agree with the Agitators. That Thrall-loving @#$% Jaina needs to be deposed, the men-at-arms of Theramore turned to valiant deeds against the animals of Orgrimmar, and this pretense of peace with the green-skins done away with once and for all.

Additionally, Theramore has spies out by Brackenwall, an ogre village allied with the Horde, and was actively sending troops further into the Barrens in the name of King Varian.

I mention this only because, from both Alliance and Horde standpoints, Theramore was by no means a neutral ground, nor lack of a threat. Theramore, whether by Jaina’s decree or not, was already actively brewing resentment and making moves against the Horde.

Garrosh’s plan was good. Parking the Horde ships just outside Theramore’s waters to intimidate—as well as prepare—Theramore for an assault is pretty clever, in my opinion. They had a chance to clear out civilians as well as gather enough Alliance forces to combat the estimated number of Horde units. He also had the Horde march in, engage in a skirmish, and then retreat; it gave the Horde a chance to fight a true battle and sent a direct message to the Alliance about what they were up against. But this was not the whole of Garrosh’s plan, and that is where it gets bad. Everything I just mentioned was only for appearances, as Garrosh’s true intentions were unbeknownst to everyone but his closest associates (Malkorok, some Kor’kron, etc.).

Literally everything else following this is completely fucking obscene, unethical, dishonorable, grotesque, cowardly, and whatever the hell else you want to call it. Even if Theramore hadn’t been nuked, per se, and it was just the enslaved elementals or just the barrage of siege weaponry, the travesty and crime of Garrosh’s attack on Theramore was that it was dishonorable. It was unjust, and it was dishonest. He deliberately withheld information from his own people, including the other racial leaders, and threatened them with treason and/or death if they were to question his methods. He lied to the Horde AND the Alliance. They say all is fair in love and war, but Theramore wasn’t warfare. It was extermination, and Garrosh used every ounce of deception and abuse that he could to screw everybody over.

The bombing of Theramore fucking sucks. Stealing the Focusing Iris is fucking dumb (still have no idea how the Horde managed to pull that shit off, by the way), and reading through Tides of War was a grueling experience. From a fiction standpoint, it is one of the lowest, most non-rewarding experiences I’ve had in WoW’s storytelling. It is similar to a gripe I have with the majority of Pixar films: sometimes the low that is hit is so low, so hopeless, that there is emotionally a point of no return in which, I personally feel, the story has been fatally wounded. Maybe it’s because of my own experiences with trauma or whatever, but reaching an “emotional dead-end” in a story like that completely negates whatever sort of redemption buds from that conflict; it may heal, but it leaves a scar. Maybe it’s because I’m a pathetic softie grown on Disney movies that can’t handle more than two seconds of a bad time, who knows. But I hate knowing shit can be irreparably damaged in stories with zero hopeful outlook, especially when I myself as a viewer, or in identifying with the protagonist, am held accountable. I don’t glean entertainment or enjoyment from stories that infuse me with guilt and tell me that everything is my fault and that I let this happen and deserve to be punished or killed.

Theramore was the furnace scene in Toy Story 3, or the first ten minutes of Up, or the scene in the first ten minutes of the emotional water-boarding and Adventures in Manipulation that is A Bug’s Life where you see the ants slaving away and Flik fucks up the entire goddamn program, a year’s worth of work, because he was “only trying to help”. Absolutely fuck that, dude. I don’t care how the rest of that shit turns out. How are you going to make your audience identify with the character that goes and fucks everything up? How do you expect your audience to sit there feeling like it was their fault? No amount of friend-making musical numbers is gonna cauterize that. 

Theramore was the death knell of a thousand things. Anything Jaina does from now on is going to be seen as irrational because of her own people standing against her and players trying to justify reasons for why Garrosh did what he did and how he, technically, was blah blah blah. Jaina is put through a meatgrinder and made to feel some of the worst pain anyone can ever feel. Jaina has already been through an entire shitshow. She has lost her father, her fiancé, her people, her home, and anyone she could have ever trusted. She has lost everything she has sacrificed these things for: peace. It’s gone. In the blink of an eye. Jaina built Theramore. 

Everyone jokes about death knights giving the Illidari a side-eye when they ask “I’ve sacrificed everything—what have you given?” How does it feel to be the woman who, maybe, she’ll never know, might have been able to prevent the rise of the Lich King? Was she wrong to reject Arthas at Stratholme? To reject Kael’thas in Dalaran? To reject her father Daelin and stand with Thrall? People take pity on Illidan, who even gets a redemptive arc in Legion and is literally a demon, yet accuse Jaina of being a dreadlord because of the justified anger she feels and pain she has endured. Theramore is now a scapegoat for all of her sorrow as people conveniently forget the rest of her history.

Garrosh’s character was executed with Theramore. Anything after that must have been emotionally exhausting beyond belief. I can’t imagine having to play through Pandaria with that piece of shit as Warchief. He let everyone down. How could anyone say “for the Horde” proudly with anything but hatred in their hearts? Who could condone that? Bringing the enormity of something like that to a video game that is supposed to be fun and interesting and certainly have a bit of storytelling conflict, sure, but not to that degree, ultimately sucks the fun out of it. Theramore didn’t need to happen the way it did, and personally I think the dropping of the mana bomb/nuke, and all of the deaths associated with it, and how graphically it was recounted in Tides of War—Jaina sifting through the rubble of her home, touching the remains of Kinndy and having them burst into arcane powder in her hands, dedicating the length of the book to building up to the event—was incredibly fucking tasteless. It could have been a barrage of bombs, even, like the goblins do all the time, or, like I said, it would have sealed the deal enough to have Garrosh abuse the elements and lie to his people to paint him as a villain. 

I mean, I guess they wanted to tie in Dalaran’s neutrality somehow and create conflict there (for some reason, even though both the Horde and the Alliance are back there in Legion, I guess because Jaina left the Kirin Tor), and Rhonin could have died in literally any other imaginable way. It didn’t have to be from a “magical” nuke. If it was supposed to somehow “forward” WoW’s standard technology (which is indeed one thing that Garrosh did, pulling the Horde into the industrial age), they fucked up by making it a one-time resource like the Focusing Iris and using it in such a grisly, abominable way that even the Forsaken’s stomachs turned. From a gameplay, story, and even lore perspective, it was absolute overkill. 

tl;dr Garrosh’s attack on Theramore was absolutely heinous and was the death of his character. I don’t know how anyone took the Divine Bell as a threat after the Theramore scenario, and literally the only way they could have upped the evil ante for Garrosh at the end of Mists was to have him seize the heart of a dead Old God, the only thing more evil and more powerful than the demons he apparently so reviled. It fucked up everything, including the overall storytelling tone of the Warcraft franchise. Nobody won and nothing about it is entertaining in the slightest. It’s incredibly tasteless and, in my opinion, a huge smudge on the lore, and one of Blizzard’s most—if not the most—flagrant cases of “bad writing”. People still talk about it, sure, not because it was emotionally gray and compelling like the mak’gora between Garrosh and Thrall, but because it was outlandishly inappropriate for the setting.

I love Garrosh as a character, but Theramore is honestly one of those things I basically just block out of my mind. I am more comfortable with him stealing the heart of Y’shaarj than the extermination of Theramore.