Know Your Lore: Underutilized Warcraft characters

World of Warcraft has a host of characters, some with massive importance to the story of the game, like King Varian Wrynn or Sylvanas Windrunner, Banshee Queen of the Forsaken. But it also has characters who appear for a brief time and then seemingly vanish or end up forgotten in the vast spectacle of the game. Some of these Warcraft characters had a lot of potential, in my opinion. Today’s KYL will be me taking a look at some of these characters and explaining why I’d like to see more of them.

Joanna Blueheart

Joanna Blueheart was introduced in Cataclysm as part of the revamped Swamp of Sorrows quests for Alliance. One of the reasons I found her interesting at the time is the speech she gives to players who come to the zone to participate in the battle for Stonard.

This land is where orcs and humans first spilled each other’s blood. Not a mile south lurks Stonard, where the orcs first grouped to invade our lands.

It was here they amassed their armies before we even knew they existed. It was here that they started the first of three wars with their attack on a small Alliance town to the west.

My town. The town where my parents died to save me.

But I’m not here to settle a grudge… I’m here to win a war.

Joanna Blueheart is an example of, for lack of a better phrase, the human cost of the Orcish invasion of Azeroth. Joanna lost her town, her family, and has grown up in the shadow of wars she had no control over — and now she’s grown to adulthood and is participating in the next generation’s battles. Joanna Blueheart is essentially the perfect representation of the Alliance as it currently exists — her life shaped by decades of war and invasion after invasion.

In a way, she’s the perfect Human point of view character. She’s not royalty, it’s not her call whether or not the Alliance makes common cause with a former enemy or not. She’s not here to settle a grudge. She’s here to win a war.

And as that character I’d love to see more of her. Imagine Major Blueheart taking command of a squad of SI:7 and leading the charge on the Broken Isles, or helping push into Suramar. Or finding herself in Stormwind as one of the King’s advisors, totally out of her element but willing to do whatever she had to for her country and her people. We need new characters who can serve as the face of the Alliance, and Joanna would be just about perfect.

Gorgonna

This is one of my favorite Horde characters because she embodies both sides of the coin — she’s being forced to live in a world she never asked for, dealing with the atrocities of her parents and the consequences of their actions, while trying to find a way to live honorably. It’s one thing for characters like Varok Saurfang, who actually drank the blood of Mannoroth, to try and atone for their actions. But Gorgonna’s parents drank the blood. Her parents committed atrocities. She didn’t, and yet she’s the one who grew up in an internment camp. She’s the one who had to endure privation for crimes she never committed, and who followed Thrall because he promised her people a new path, a way to escape their suffering.

And she accepted that the Orcs would be forced to live in Durotar, a desert, to atone for what they’d done, even though neither Thrall nor many of his followers actually did any of it. Gorgonna even put her principles into action when her sister Krenna became one of Garrosh Hellscream’s commanders in the Grizzly Hills, seeking to palliate her sister’s warmongering with common sense that ended up infuriating her sibling. In the end, Gorgonna was forced to kill her own sister and assume command…and that’s the last time we saw her.

An Orc like Gorgonna perfectly encapsulates the Horde dilemma — “Our parents did horrible things, and many of our generation want to repeat those same actions. How do we find an honorable way forward? How long must we atone for others?” Following the fall of Garrosh Hellscream and the rise of Vol’jin as Warchief, the Orcish identity is up in the air, and characters like Gorgonna could definitely give us a view into what it is to be an Orc in modern Azeroth. It’s time to bring her back.

Whatever happened to Tagar?

So back during the founding of Durotar, when the Horde was building Orgrimmar and Rexxar came to be known as the Champion of the Horde, Cairne Bloodhoof had a second in command named Tagar. During this period, Cairne grew despondent when his son Baine was kidnapped by harpies, and it was Tagar who unofficially led the Tauren during this time. Tagar served to inform Rexxar of Cairne’s depression and Baine’s kidnapping, and helped Rexxar free Baine and restore Cairne to his leadership role.

So we have this Tauren Warrior, who is smart enough to lead his people, work out the best way to restore his chieftain to his fighting mettle, and who keeps the Tauren united and whole during this time (no easy feat since we now know that Magatha Grimtotem was plotting against Cairne and the Bloodhoof for years) and…that’s it. After Rexxar defeats Daelin Proudmoore we never see Tagar again. He wasn’t in vanilla WoW, he hasn’t popped up since Cairne died, he certainly isn’t serving Baine in any way that we’ve yet seen. He just vanished, as far as I can tell.

So seriously, whatever happened to Tagar? Where did he go? Did he die? If so, how? If not, where is he? What’s Tagar been up to since the end of the Third War? Did he retire to a little farm in Mulgore somewhere? Does he walk the surface of the Earthmother? Maybe he started an inn somewhere. All I know is, I want to know what happened to Tagar.

And of course there are more

I’m actually very curious who you, the readers at home (or on the bus, or wherever you can check your phone, the internet is everywhere you could be in the bathroom at your favorite coffee place reading about Orcs, it’s a magic time) think is an underutilized character in World of Warcraft. I was tempted to talk about Pained, who I’m still mad died in a novel (forget Illidan, I’m on board with Pained getting to come back in some capacity) but I’m thinking the comments here would be a good place for you guys to let me know who you’d like to see me cover in a future post. Who do you think deserves more story in WoW?