Who doesn’t get a fair shake in Warcraft?

Azeroth must be a terrible place to live. There are disasters around every corner, and tragedy eventually finds everyone. But some individuals — heck, some entire species — experience more disaster than anyone else and don’t seem to have anything to show for it.

When thinking about who must have the worst existence on Azeroth, dragons spring to mind. Not any individual dragon, but dragons as a whole. Recruited by the Titans to be servants and guardians on Azeroth, they experienced many thousands of years of total garbage only to, in the end, be rendered completely and utterly infertile as a species, doomed to a slow and inevitable extinction. And nobody seems to care! Not one person! Every now and then we see a one-liner “Aw, dang” from someone, but generally speaking, we don’t know if anyone is even trying to help as the dragons undergo an actual existential crisis.

On an individual level, dragons have also been used and abused in some of the darkest moments in Warcraft. Alexstrasza was enslaved and forced to breed mounts for Orcs. Malygos tried to break Keristrasza‘s mind and force her to be his new consort. The way Warcraft treats its fully-sentient dragons is downright twisted. Maybe they hope no one will think too hard about it because they lay eggs.

Speaking of eggs, harpies are another Azerothian species who don’t get a fair shake. Almost every species on Azeroth has at least one little moment of light and levity, even if we keep on happily killing them. Harpies, though? I’m not sure they’ve ever had a noteworthy moment, and even as trash mobs, we generally treat them worse than anyone else. Many harpy-related quests ask us to inflict some serious brutality up to — and often including — smashing their eggs and burning their nests. That’s pretty harsh, isn’t it? We’re killing their children and burning their homes. That’s not something we usually do, is it? I know I’ve killed a lot of gnolls, but a quest never asked me to participate in gnoll infanticide.

It’s like we decide how we’re going to treat our enemies (and allies) based not on whether or not they’re thinking, feeling beings, but based on whether or not they give live birth. Oh, you came from an egg? Oh man, you are so screwed.

What about you? Who do you think doesn’t get a fair shake in the Warcraft universe? Groups, individuals, whomever it may be, go wild.