The-Horde
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Hellscream is not my Warchief
Sometimes, it's not just about the race you choose to play -- it's about how the story behind it is handled. Matthew Rossi wrote an interesting piece about how the race one plays has a direct effect on how one approaches the story in the game. Playing an orc and keeping in mind what it is to be an orc makes Garrosh and his plans look infinitely more appealing than one would consider straight off the bat. But on the other end of the equation, there are lots of Horde players who don't play an orc. Take me, for example -- while I started out as a Forsaken priest, I've now played a blood elf rogue for far longer. To me, Hellscream's actions are questionable at best, horrific beyond imagining at worst. Yet here I am, still playing Horde and carrying out the orders of Hellscream. The why of it all is the part that is an incredibly clever design move on the part of the story development team.
Hellscream is my warchief
The choice of what race you play in the game can be more significant than I'd understood. Usually, whenever I roll a Horde toon, I play a tauren. As a result, my point of view has always skewed towards that of the tauren NPC's like Baine and Cairne. I found certain Horde quests distasteful and couldn't get into how the Horde seemed to be getting more bellicose as Cataclysm developed, much less the full on 'war were declared' mindset of Mists of Pandaria. Doing the Horde side quests on my tauren, I always felt mindlessly violent and that I was simply making things worse everywhere I went. Cut to a few months down the road, and I'm playing as an orc. Suddenly, I have absolutely no problem with what I'm doing. The entire Dominance Offensive has been incredibly refreshing because trying to get into the mindset of an orc has made it all very simple. It's not fair to call orcs simple exactly, but you could call them elemental, in a way -- going all the way back to their tribal roots on Draenor, when survival was paramount and life was a struggle. There's a pure Darwinism to it all, the strong take what they need or they aren't strong at all. In many ways, I see the Horde through new eyes. While Matthew Rossi, the human being writing this article likes them even less now in a lot of ways -- seeing the Horde constantly taking aggressive action then complain and whine when they get hit back always annoys me, for instance -- I'm enjoying playing Horde a lot more now, because I can finally understand how someone could follow Hellscream willingly. If anything, Garrosh Hellscream isn't perverting the Horde or the orcish character at all. He's the ultimate fulfillment of it.
