Everybody To The Tree!


Meanwhile, an escaped orc and former pit fighter named Thrall leads his people (who were put in internment camps by the humans after the Second War) to Kalimdor after Medivh (who I guess is good now) appears to him and tells him everything’s about to go to hell literally. Along the way, he picks up some troll and tauren allies—the foundation of the modern Horde faction. With the help of his buddy Garrosh Hellscream, they kill the demon lord Mannoroth, whose blood corrupted the orcs in the first place, and free the outcast race from their bloodlust.

They eventually team up with Jaina and the night elves, the latter having pretty much forgotten the rest of the world existed for the last 10,000 years, to protect the World Tree Nordrassil—which had grown out of what was left of the Well of Eternity and was now the winner of the reality show Azeroth’s Top Potential Demon Portal Battery. Working together, they defeated Archimonde and the Legion in open battle for a second time. But Arthas is still causing problems, and he’s on his way to Northrend to merge with the Lich King all the way.

TL;DR: Thrall creates the Horde, frees the orcs from demonic corruption, and joins the night elves and some human exiles to thwart the Burning Legion’s second invasion. Sargeras is getting kinda fed up at this point. Arthas has a spooky hat with an undead orc in it now.


22 Years Ago to 2 Years Ago - The World Almost Ends Several More Times


Over the course of World of Warcraft’s release and its first several expansions, a lot has happened. Illidan Stormrage died (but he got better). Arthas died and was replaced by a new Lich King who promises to be nice. Deathwing broke the world again, then died. And the Alliance and Horde did battle while figures like Thrall and Jaina Proudmoore tried to be the voices of reason and end the conflict.

Then someone messed that up.

Garrosh Hellscream (son of Grom, slayer of Mannoroth) became warchief of the Horde after Thrall left to lead the non-sectarian shamans of the Earthen Ring. Except he wasn’t super interested in peace, and blew up Jaina Proudmoore’s city of Theramore with a mana bomb. The upshot is that Jaina is not super into peace anymore either and wants the Horde good and dead. Garrosh is eventually deposed in part by a troll rebellion led by the next warchief, Vol’jin, but Jaina still isn’t keen on letting bygones be bygones.

TL;DR: Everyone and their aunt takes a turn trying to destroy Azeroth, but we stop them in their tracks. The Horde gets a new warchief who blows up an entire city with a magic bomb, which Jaina takes great offense to.


About 2 Years Ago - Round 3, Fight!


Trying to explain Warlords of Draenor is almost an exercise in futility, so rest assured it has to do with time travel and alternate universes and doesn’t really matter much to the current storyline. What’s important is that a version of the orc warlock Gul’dan from an alternate timeline (the original died during WarCraft II) heralds the third and largest Burning Legion invasion of Azeroth, and the Horde and Alliance have to work together to stop it.

Not only did we defeat them a third time, we chased them to their original homeworld of Argus and cut them down at the source. Sargeras is imprisoned by Illidan and the other Titans, but not before he quite literally stabs Azeroth with a sword the size of a large asteroid, wounding the World-soul and causing it to bleed the powerful material called Azerite, which is one of the things we’re about to be fighting over in Battle for Azeroth. In the course of the war, Vol’Jin is mortally wounded and decides it’s a good idea to name Sylvanas his successor because of a vision he was given by the troll gods.

TL;DR: The Legion returns for a third time. We defeat them, go to their homeworld, and curb-stomp them into cosmic irrelevance. Sargeras wounds Azeroth before being imprisoned. Sylvanas is in charge of the Horde now.


Present Day - The War of the Thorns and the Battle for Lordaeron


There’s a lot of complicated politicking going on in the wake of the Legion’s defeat, mostly centered on Sylvanas, whose main motive seems to be propagating the Forsaken and hating the living because her two non-undead sisters were mean to her or something. After an effort was made to reconcile the undead who were once citizens of Lordaeron with their living relatives, she went berserk and had a bunch of her own people killed. There are some fan theories that she sees undeath as the only true defense against the power of the Void Lords, which would lend some method to all this madness. But for now, from most average folks’ perspectives, she’s not being very nice.

Her next act of murder was the War of the Thorns, in which she sent Horde forces to overrun Alliance strongholds on Kalimdor and, apparently on a momentary whim, decided to burn down the great tree Teldrassil, which held the capital of the Night Elf civilization. The death toll was tremendous. In retaliation, the Alliance dispatched an army to capture the old capital of Lordaeron and banish the undead from the Tirisfal Glades (with help from Jaina and her new, magic ghost ship), tit-for-tat.

TL;DR: Sylvanas is killing everyone. She burned down the giant tree the night elves lived in, and then the Alliance sieged her capital and kicked her out of Lordaeron. We have ourselves quite the war.

And there you have it. Give or take a small truckload of details and B-side plots, the stage is set and you should have an idea of where the main players (namely Jaina and Sylvanas) are coming from. There’s enough lore out there that you could probably get a PhD in Azerothian History, but the important things to remember are “Sargeras Bad,” “The Horde and Alliance never get along except every time there’s a greater common threat which is all the time,” and “Sylvanas needs to freakin’ chill.”