World of Warcraft®

and his reign as Warchief.

I found this awesome post, By Jarad from Scarshield Legion. a few years ago. That I still think is relevant today and I'd like to hear your thoughts of it.
Obviously I agree with it.

Simply put, Thrall has lost his balls. His leadership has become half-arsed and is responsible for failure.

Thrall used to be fantastic. He was always rather a Mary Sue, but he represented a massive paradigm shift for the setting. But somewhere along the line, he was flanderized. Forging a destiny for his people used to be his primary concern, but somewhere along the line he become Peacechief Ned Flanders; a toothless puppy dog advocating peace at all costs.

Don't get me wrong, Thrall's pro-peace agenda was admirable. It would have been great... If he'd actually had the strength to pull it off. But he didn't. While he preached peace, he was too timid to control the Horde into accepting peace.

The forsaken come up as an obvious example. Thrall chose to heed the advice of the Earthen Ring, and admit them into the Horde. You can say that no-one could have predicted the Wrathgate, and that Varimthras (the towering demonic overlord) wasn't suspicious at all, but the fact is the forsaken were out of control before the Wrathgate. As members of the Horde, they were slaughtering the civilians of Hillsbrad. If Thrall wanted the Horde to achieve peace, he should, y'know, not have let them do that.

The Grimtotem tribe have been running amok since vanilla. As much as people get confused over their lore, they are within the Horde as members of the Confederated Tribes of the Tauren. The Grimtotem have been covertly running around burning, pillaging, and kidnapping in a terrorist reign of terror, not only destabilizing the Horde internally with their actions and separatist ideals, but also damaging the Horde's reputation with the Alliance. And throughout quests, their actions are treated as a delicate political secret. Thrall knew all about the treachery of the Grimtotem, and did nothing because he was too meek to deal with them. And hey, guess who dies because the Grimtotem were never dealt with?

Not only is Thrall too meek to keep his subordinates in line, he actually allows them to undermine him in his presence. In the comics and WotLK, he takes Garrosh with him to every important diplomatic meeting and impotently does nothing while Garrosh upstages and undermines him. Sure, Thrall says he is disappointed and he makes apologies for Garrosh's behaviour, but he still allows Garrosh free reign even while in his own presence, and even seems to defer to Garrosh often enough. Is that a good leader? No. The simple fact is that for a leader to suffer one of his subordinates to continually undermine him in public is weak. There is no other word for it.

And then we get Thrall's behaviour towards the Alliance. Yeah, he wants peace, that's admirable. And yeah, he has outright failed at creating it. But he is the Warchief of the Horde... and when Varian Wrynn promises to see the Horde disbanded and actually tries to murder him, Thrall sits down, sulks, and then, in typical Thrall fashion, does absolutely nothing about it. He shows up in Northrend behaving as though everyone can still be friends, bending over backwards to comply with Tirion Fordring's ego and his wasteful pageantry.

That's the problem with Thrall. If the Warchief wants peace? Great, make it. If the Warchief wants war, or to defend his people? Great, commit to it. But Thrall's pro-peace ideals, coupled with his utter failure at leading the Horde into making that peace, means that, under his hand, the Horde fails at peace and fails at war because its leader is too meek to commit to either and do what must be done to achieve it.

I've made the point before that Thrall is... trusting. VERY trusting.
Thrall seems to think the best of everyone, thinks that everyone can improve. In WC3, he trusted Grom to not be a raging berzerker(this failed), he trusted some crazy human prophet far enough to send the entire Horde off to Kalimdor(this succeeded), he trusted Jaina, Tyrande and Furion enough to set up the Grand Alliance, after having just met them(this succeeded, but also set him up for Daelins betrayal later on). In tFT he entrust the Horde to some half-Ogre he's only just met(this succeeds), and trusts Jaina to keep Theramore from waging war on the Horde(this works for a while, but not very long). In WoW, he invites both the Forsaken, and worse, WARLOCKS into the Horde(about half the Forsaken betrays the Horde later on, the other half is actively ignoring his orders. Most of the warlocks seems to have been agents of the Shadow Council). In Burning Crusade he invites the Blood Elves as well(this has worked fine so far). In Wrath he adds Death Knights(strangely enough, this has yet to bite him in the !@#), and starts having Garrosh following him around(despite this decision screwing up just about every event he attends). In Cat, he made Garrosh temporary warchief(which... well... was bad. Let's just leave it at that), and invited a Goblin Trade Prince into the Horde, just after said Trade Prince had tried to enslave his entire race(which might actually have been even dumber than the Garrosh debacle).
Him not giving the Dragon Soul to Benedictus in End Times suddenly feels like character development :p

To want peace is not a flaw. The path you take to reach said peace might be, especially when said path doesn't actually reach your goal.
Had these flaws ever been touched upon by another character, Thralls would've suddenly been a surprisingly balanced character. He still wouldn't be a good character, but he might end up passable.

I'd wager Thrall didn't actually know about what the Forsaken were doing in Hillsbrad. He was on the other side of the world, dealing with the Shadow Council most of the time, and back then, Sylvanas was a lot better at hiding her actions.
The Grimtotem are a lot more facepalmey. He DID know about those, and we never saw him try to move against them in any way at all... Perhaps he trusted them to realise their faults, too?

That's an interesting quote, but I wasn't sure the Earthen Ring played a part in admitting the Forsaken? I thought that was more down to Magatha.

15/04/2012 16:48Posted by Lacryn

That's an interesting quote, but I wasn't sure the Earthen Ring played a part in admitting the Forsaken? I thought that was more down to Magatha.

Thrall as warchief had final decision in allowing the forsaken entry to the horde.

I find it pretty harsh to blame Thrall for the Grimtotem. You cant expect Thrall to do EVERYTHING......Cairne should have taken care of Magatha a long time ago......for gods sake, she was IN Thunder Bluff.

But i do agree Thrall lost his balls. I think the lore staff believes that having god-like powers equals having balls....it doesnt.

I find it pretty harsh to blame Thrall for the Grimtotem. You cant expect Thrall to do EVERYTHING......Cairne should have taken care of Magatha a long time ago......for gods sake, she was IN Thunder Bluff.

But i do agree Thrall lost his balls. I think the lore staff believes that having god-like powers equals having balls....it doesnt.

Yea Cairne was very passive and did not act against a real threat in the grimtotem, but for many other problems the blame is at Thralls door. But I do wonder why the horde put up with grimtotem skirmishes and allowed Magatha to be around and even bless Garrosh's weapon.

Did no one see a rat?

Same reason nobody thought having a Dreadlord in a position of power was a bad idea.

15/04/2012 17:19Posted by Redemptioner

That's an interesting quote, but I wasn't sure the Earthen Ring played a part in admitting the Forsaken? I thought that was more down to Magatha.

Thrall as warchief had final decision in allowing the forsaken entry to the horde.

I'm aware of that, as with what happened with the Blood Elves, admitted into the Horde as they managed to kill Dar'khan (a second time, despite being incinerated in the manga) and with Sylvanas' personal endorsement. The Elves also shared the knowledge of the Mag'har and the Horde envoys in Silvermoon discussed the purpose and nature of their union. I agree with that principle of the "warchief decides" but I think lobbying might have played a part as well.

15/04/2012 22:51Posted by Blayzereborn

Same reason nobody thought having a Dreadlord in a position of power was a bad idea.

So much sense.

16/04/2012 20:08Posted by Lacryn

Thrall as warchief had final decision in allowing the forsaken entry to the horde.

I'm aware of that, as with what happened with the Blood Elves, admitted into the Horde as they managed to kill Dar'khan (a second time, despite being incinerated in the manga) and with Sylvanas' personal endorsement. The Elves also shared the knowledge of the Mag'har and the Horde envoys in Silvermoon discussed the purpose and nature of their union. I agree with that principle of the "warchief decides" but I think lobbying might have played a part as well.

oh definately, just saying Thrall is ultimately the guy who had final say and he somehow does not ever get held acocuntable for his crappy choices.