Corruption and infighting threaten the Horde's survival

Full History

The transformation of Draenor's orcs into the Horde did not create a stable and flourishing civilization. It produced an armed confederation increasingly dependent upon conquest, manipulation, and demonic force. Gul'dan's Shadow Council encouraged wars that displaced older clan customs and devastated the peoples the Horde fought. The same campaigns that demonstrated the orcs' military power also weakened the conditions in which that power could be sustained.

Among the clans, the language of honor and kinship was often overshadowed by the demands of war. Chiefs who resisted the new order were punished, and many warriors were bound to the blood curse of Mannoroth. Gul'dan held influence from behind the public command of Blackhand, while rival ambitions threatened the unity he sought to exploit. Such an arrangement could remain powerful while enemies were available, but its internal contradictions did not disappear.

As Draenor was despoiled and the Horde sought new opportunities, communication with Medivh presented a solution to its leaders' ambitions. The Guardian of Azeroth and Gul'dan pursued the opening of a passage between worlds. To the Horde, the Dark Portal offered entry to a land inhabited by new enemies and rich territories. To the Legion's agents, it served a strategy reaching far beyond the needs of the orcish clans.

The invasion of Azeroth followed, beginning the First War and ultimately bringing ruin to Stormwind. Draenor's earlier collapse was therefore the immediate setting for a conflict that would transform a second world. It also foreshadowed the danger of relying on conquest as a means of holding together a society corrupted by forces it could not control. The Dark Portal did not solve the Horde's deeper divisions; it carried them into a wider war.