About 16,000 years ago before the First Great War, long before the War of the Ancients, trolls lorded over much of Kalimdor (then a single continent). At the same time as the Troll Empire, the world was also ruled by the Azi’Aqir, a race bent on eradicating all non-insectoid life from Kalimdor. The Trolls fought them for many thousands of years, but never won a decisive victory. Eventually due to the trolls’ persistence, the Aqiri kingdom split in half and its citizens were driven into exile in separate locations. The Azjol Nerub, or Nerubians (the final remnants of whom appear as Crypt Stalkers in-game), in the North, and the Ahn’Qiraj, or the Silithid, in the south. It was the Troll heroes who defeated these great menaces and paved the way for all future races on Azeroth.

However, after their victories, rivalries began to split the Trolls as well. Twin troll empires were born from the conflict — the Gurubashi Empire of the southeastern jungles and the Amani Empire of the middle forestlands. A few small tribes that wanted no part of this rivalry escaped far to the north (in the region now known as Northrend). These tribes founded a small nation known as Gundrak, but never achieved the size or prosperity of the southern empires. The Gurubashi and the Amani empires had little love for one another, but rarely warred against each other.

Despite the warfare, neither civilization expanded much farther than their original boundaries, but ancient texts speak of a small faction of Amani trolls that broke off from the empire and founded their own colony in the heart of the dark continent. There they discovered the Well of Eternity and the cosmic energies transformed them into beings of immense power. Some legends suggest that these trolls became the first night elves, though the theory has never been proven. However, it would eventually be the Night Elves who would dismantle the Troll Empires once and for all.