All right. It’s been a few days. Now that the excitement of the very first Garrosh kill on both factions has died down — well, sort of; a lot of us are still very much excited about it, and congratulations to the guilds of both factions who successfully brought him down a couple of days after the patch dropped — let’s talk about the ending of the Siege of Orgrimmar!

Warning! Warning! Spoilers exist below the following cut. For those of you who have managed to remain spoiler free, and for those of you who want to keep it that way until you guys manage to take Garrosh down yourself, do not click the cut. This will be your only warning!

Still with me? Okay, then.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited for this patch. After all, the trailer for the patch itself was the very thing that brought me back to this game. I was excited for this patch in a way that I’ve only felt once before, and that was during the Wrath of the Lich King when Blizzard announced the Icecrown Citadel raid. So when we finally had tangible evidence that it would be possible for us to curbstomp Garrosh, I knew I had to get involved.

Being the Horde player that I am, I can honestly say that Garrosh has kind of been on my shit list ever since Mists of Pandaria came out. I have not been happy to have him as a Warchief. He went and divided up Orgrimmar into districts, pretty much segregated everyone who wasn’t an orc, and was generally being a dick to everyone. We’re not even going to get into him manabombing Theramore (which I still don’t understand the reasoning for) or the initial clusterfuck that the Horde invading Pandaria was. The latter was just bad on both sides of the fence. Regardless, as I’ve been saying since Garrosh took the reins with the Cataclysm, Garrosh has never been my warchief.

But then, like a beacon of hope, Vol’jin emerged, uniting the Horde to raise up an army against him. Alliance and Horde alike banded together once again to take down our common enemy: Garrosh. And it was glorious.

When cries of the first Alliance kill of Garrosh went out across the internet, I was beyond excited. Part of me knew there would be a cinematic after the kill, and, as it turned out, we actually got two: one for the Alliance and another for the Horde. Thanks to the magic of the internet, we get to see both, and I shamelessly admit that I sat in on a livestream of the first Hordeside kill, happily cheering on a guild I didn’t know as I watched Garrosh’s HP get lower and lower. What we got in those cinematics, though, was glorious.

Garrosh, to my initial surprise, did not get to die. Well, at least not yet. Taran Zhu claimed him as a prisoner instead, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was okay with it. For one thing, I wasn’t quite ready for Garrosh to die. Besides which, Garrosh has a lot to answer for. He completely messed up Pandaria, and, as Taran Zhu pointed out, the pandaren have suffered the most (or, at the very least, more immediately) than the others. Given that, it wouldn’t really be right if the Horde or the Alliance executed Garrosh. After all, he did throw the heart of an Old God into the pools of the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. The pandaren deserve the right to make Garrosh answer for the crimes he’s committed.

But then that leaves the question of who becomes warchief in his absence? Part of me almost expected Thrall to step back up, as Vol’jin did, but then I realized that wouldn’t be right, either. After all, where has Thrall been all this time?

No, I’m perfectly serious. Where the hell has he been? I mean, I understand that he probably felt he deserved a break after trying to keep the world together and dealing with Deathwing. I know he has a son now, and I understand that at as a new father, he’d want to spend time with his kid, but unless you’ve read the Tides of War tie-in, you’d legitimately have no idea how he’s been involved in any of the current plot at least until the the Escalation plotline when we magically see him again with Vol’jin and Chen, giving us no real explanation as to where he’s been this entire time. Even a line or two would have been nice! But, no, we don’t really get anything.

Regardless, Thrall hasn’t shown much in the way of leadership at all this expansion. At all. The only one who has has been Vol’jin. It’s Vol’jin who unites the Horde together against Garrosh. It’s Vol’jin who goes out of his way to get everyone together, and it’s Vol’jin who is determined to uphold the values of the Horde that Thrall founded. Thus, when it came time to declare a new Warchief, I wasn’t all that surprised when Thrall took a knee before Vol’jin himself, a decision I’m completely happy with. Vol’jin is one of my favorite racial leaders and I’m perfectly content to serve him as Warchief.

As for Jaina, I’ve seen a lot of people complain about her and how she’s been handled so far with the new content. I haven’t been playing Alliance for very long, and, as a result, I really don’t have much of a frame of reference for what’s been done to her character. All I know is that it seemed like they were trying a bit too hard to turn her in a proper manipulator only to have it fail miserably in the Alliance cinematic. Past that… I’m not entirely sure what to else to say about Jaina. Other people could express their feelings on the matter far better than I could.

That said, though… where do things go from here? Well, truthfully, I’m not entirely sure, but I’m okay with that. I’m liking where things are going, and now that I’m back, I’m eager to see how things play out.