Please do not change the original Lore!

General Discussion
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Like i said, they were absolutely replaceable.

Why have them there? Because they needed a villain. They needed something to take power away from to show how the characters grow. That is their purpose int he story. You could suppose the same thing about Garithos - Why have Humans lingering in the EK? Would you say because they want to show how powerful Humans are? Of course not.

Notice how the Dreadlord/Legion story did not grow whatsoever afterwards. If not for the rewritten ‘we didn’t really die!’ parts of WoW, their story ended in TFT. Dreadlords were defeated.

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Varimathras was still alive…

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He was Sylvanas’ bi*ch, yes… He was a dog. A slave.

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The Scarlet Crusade is literally headed by a Dreadlord dude… LOL What are you smoking?

That’s their point dude. They’re not incompetent (you’re once again hyperbolizing) but they are crushed by their own machinations. Their characters are cruel ironies, as all their plotting is really just planned for by fish far bigger than them. (Sargeras, Lich King, etc).

Grasping at straws dude. You’re downplaying them so much here, and ignoring the vast majority of the story in the process.

After this point you’re straight trolling. “Oh I’m just gonna ignore some of the events that I don’t like, and then hyperbolize away the rest of the events away as well.”

You could literally replace “Dreadlords” with “Dwarves” in your argument, and it would essentially still hold with minor tweaks as an argument for removing all Dwarves from Wc3.

Seriously dude? Like I realize there’s no convincing you, as you’re just another forum troll, but dang. The whole point of them is that they were disconnected from the events in Kalimdor, and were caught unawares by the Lich King’s own plots (alluded to earlier in my post). The point is that Dreadlords are plotters, but by irony of their position, are merely bugs trapped in the plots of larger foes. (Plots in plots in plots, watch a Sherlock Holmes movie and you’ll understand.)

Dude. You could argue any character that’s not a protagonist exists for staging conflicts with the main character. They either assist, reinforce, or help create conflicts, that’s what characters do in any story.

All I can say is, I second Mephistroth’s statements. You just have a hate-b*ner for Dreadlords, as you just ignore everything that makes them great.

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Sorry for interfering the talk, but WoW ruined Varimathras he was clearley the loyalist and right hand of Sylvanas in WC III, even his warcry is ‘For Sylvanas!’

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Why would he let himself be enslaved if he didn’t have an agenda? Let’s not forget that this is the guy who says “I’m always on the winning side!” Not “I’m on Sylvanas’ side now”.

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Dreadlords are nuanced characters who constantly are spinning lies. Some people get it, other people are Triceron. They don’t do things like evil laugh and explain their plot to you, they drag you to Northerend and help steal your soul, using themselves as bait… They lay intricate plans, and will lie to anyone and break any rule to get their way.

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Scarlet Crusade was a creation of WoW.

I’m saying a pre-WoW versin of the SC could have replaced the Dreadlords role as Sylvanas’ unlikely ally/antagonist and the story would have played out no differently. Hell, Garithos could have even been made the end-game mustache twirler, the same way Daelin Proudmoore was the main antagonist in the Orc Campaign. The only difference is that the Dreadlords are shown to have most power and influence there at the time rather than Humans or Blackrock Orcs or any other faction; and that makes sense from a lore perspective if we are to show that the Legion is failing to maintain control of Azeroth after the defeat of Archimonde. It would be a different story if Sylvanas allied with Dreadlords and maintained their alliance; that narrative would indicate a power growth for the Legion. That is why the assertion that they continue to be masterminding things is inaccurate in the context of TFT. WoW actually subverts the TFT story by placing Balnazzar in a ‘i didn’t die, I actually took over the Scarlet Crusade!’ story; but then again WoW subverted many things like having Sylvanas join the Horde instead of maintaining independence. WoW is its own thing.

And yes, if you are to use that as an argument for dwarves, it would stand. WHy do you think Gnomes are absent from WC3 yet exist in WC2 and WoW after it? The story being told happens to not include Gnomes. The story being told happens to have Dreadlords be beaten instead of Dwarves or whomever held power in Lordaeron. It’s honestly that simple. Hell you could have even written it in as the Blackrock clan taking reigns and Sylvanas beating them back to Blackrock. The purpose of the villains that Sylvanas faced against is singular, and when I say Dreadlords, I am referring to the Dreadlords that Sylvanas faces in TFT. That context is important to note.

The Dreadlords had no other purpose in TFT than be a villain for Sylvanas to defeat. In TFT They have no positive character development beyond being powerful, evil beings. At most, we learn that they are willing to betray each other in their most desperate times. Mephistroph believes that Varimathras is deceiving Sylvanas by not really killing the other Dreadlord, but this is not what happens in TFT considering the way the plot unfolds. Varimathras in WoW is a different story, and I don’t think it should be retroactively applied to WC3 lore whatsoever. I would also be against adding anything that makes Kael’thas seem more power-hungry and conniving; the Kael we know in TFT is far different than the one we got in TBC.

I have no love/hate for Dreadlords at all, I am pointing out their purpose in the story. It’s like if we were to dissect the Elves in the Hobbit. The Elven King is there as a point of conflict to the heroes, and that is his purpose in the story. It shows that in the Hobbit, the Elves are potential bad guys because they do not have shared interests with the Dwarves/Bilbo. That doesn’t mean all Elves are bad or should be hated. It means the ones in the story are “bad guys” for the purpose of building up to a greater conflict (and twist alliance) at the end of the book. In this case, the Dreadlords purpose was to be defeated for the purpose of showing Sylvanas’ massive growth in power and stature, and to solidify the Forsaken as a potential new faction.

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Why does Varimathras need an agenda to ally with Sylvanas? He lost to her and begged for his life. You could read between the lines further into that but as far as the story is concerned, that is a win for Sylvanas, not a questionable decision.

I mean you could pose the same question of why Arthas, an unwavering proponent of the light, would pick up Frostmourne instead of heeding Muradin’s words. Well his actions speak to his character - he is singularly blinded by revenge to the point where he is willing to forsake his faith, his friends and his entire empire for it.

So why does say he’s always on the winning side? To save face after he was defeated. Why does he pledge servitude to Sylvanas instead of fighting to the death? To show that he’s a coward; otherwise they could have written him ‘pulling a Mal’ganis/Balnazzar’ and the outcome would have been little different.

If you look at Wrathgate, it doesn’t matter if Varimathras was close to Sylvanas or not. Putress never existed and was created in Wrath solely to be a ‘double agent’. Varimathras could have been killed in TFT and still return (same as Balnazzar and Malganis) to influence Putress into causing the Wrathgate incident. You see, it’s really no different in how they die. But the fact we’re shown in TFT that a Dreadlord will beg for their life is character development.

ROC paints a picture of Dreadlords being all powerful but overconfidence being their flaw. TFT paints them as continuing to be overconfident, but also to have cowardly traits. Vanilla-Wrath then shows that they are actually more powerful than they seem, and tell us ‘Oh they actually pretended to die’. Then Legion comes along and says ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter if they die, you can’t really kill them. They will return from the Twisting Nether regardless of death’. Take that as you will.

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I guess someones never heard the term “False victory.”

As if Arthas would have fallen down that cliff if he wasn’t goaded into purging Stratholme. This guy doesn’t even understand the Wc3 story… Smdh.

I’m done arguing with someone who’s just here to ignore the story and cherry pick instances / interpretations to belittle major plot points.

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Arthas being lead to Northrend was due to Dreadlord manipulation, but that’s not what I was referring to was I?

Yes, he was goaded into purging Stratholme, but it was his actions that burned his boats in Northrend and his action to take up Frostmourne despite Muradin’s warning. By all means, one could suppose that Arthas find a different means of defeating Mal’ganis in Northrend without resorting to evil. But that is not the point of the story so that is not what happened. He didn’t go to Wyrmrest Temple and seek out the aid of Dragons. He didn’t make allies out of the Nerubians, Vrykul or Drakkari who were already resisting the Undead. He didn’t seek out the Watchers of Storm Peaks. The story was written so that he becomes the bad guy. The Dread Lords were written to be foiled.

This isn’t belittling them, this is stating what their role in the story was. They are written to be high ranking commanders of the Legion who are fallible through their overconfidence.

If we were to talk about Dreadlords from lore overall, then yes they are more nuanced. But that is complicated by the plot twists and revisionist history introduced after WoW, such as Mal’ganis faking his death and being the one who created Frostmourne. It subverts the original story, much like aligning Sylvanas to the Horde and making a heel out of Kael’thas.

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Uhhh… No? They’re basically Captains in the army. Pit Lords rank higher than Dreadlords, not even talking about the Eredar Warlocks. Dreadlords are so low on the totem pole in terms of power, it’s their malice and guile that makes them any sort of formidable threat (in terms of general power rankings, not compared to Humans and other minor races obviously.)

Their writing is pretty inconsistent, as they were part of the reason Sargeras was corrupted in the first place. In Wc3 RoC they are the main actors for the Legion, as they are able to cross through and pave the way for the heavy hitters of the legion (like the Pit Lords and Eredar).

The Dreadlords more often than not have multi-layered plots that unfold. Mal’ganis “lost” at Stratholme, as Arthas (the player) purged the city before it could be fully corrupted. However, all of that was to separate Arthas from the moderating influences around him (like Uther and Jaina). Do you think that Arthas would have charged as blindly ahead if Uther or Jaina had been by his side in Northerend? No, they absolutely would not have let him do any of that (unlike Muradin who just tagged along). That pull and promise of a potential of victory was what drove Arthas so hard. Do you think, as a figure of the Legion displaying his full power and just crushing Arthas’s forces, would have helped him goad Arthas into following him?

Of course you could say the Lich King’s plots then superceded Mal’ganis’s since he is then turned upon by the new Death Knight, but that’s their point. They are medium-fish in a gigantic pond. Eredar, the Lich King, Sargeras, and even the Old Gods treat them as disposable in their own overarching plots. They’re supposed to be overconfident, which is their Achilles heel, but they are not simply there to be Sylvanas’s main antagonist in TFT.

And all of this is from Wc3 and before. I don’t consider WoW lore to be legitimate if we’re talking serious and uncompromised lore.

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The captain thing is pure semantics. Tichondrius was not so low on the chain of command, he was put in charge of the Scourge. I dont know why you would consider that low. There are three leading races of the Legion in WC3, one if which were the Nathrezim.

The point I stick to is dissecting the story from a writer/storyteller point of view. The Dreadlords sow chaos and dissent between the races. They decieve them and they are great at that. Yet in all their power they are always shown as being arrogant and overconfident and they are in the story for the purpose of being a conflict that will be overcome. At no point are they ever made to be sympathetic.

Even Orcs started out as generic villains UNTIL we got Thrall to change the face of the Horde into noble warriors. We never see Dreadlords winning the war ever. They win some battles and cause some major damage, but there is no double deception going on. They simply lose. Malganis dies. Tichondrius dies. The other dreadlords aside from Varimathras all die. That is how they are intentionally written.

I am not saying they arent badass. Hell, Illidan loses too. The difference with Illidan though is that we are given reasons to empathize with him, to root for his struggles. The dreadlords arent written in the same way whatsoever. They are goals to be taken out in the campaigns.

You can put them higher on a pedestal for motivating characters to become what they are now, but that is all due to them all being intentionally written that way. Doomhammer was rewritten to be a noble figurehead for Thrall, yet this was not what he was like in WC2 and history had to be retconned to make it seem like he was always noble and for Guldan being root cause of all evil within the otherwise noble Horde.

TFT does this to the Dreadlords. They start in a position of straggling to maintain control of the Scourge. They arent shown to yield any true victories themselves, much of that is attributed to Sylvanas. This paints them all in a bad light.

Again, they are like the Empire officers. You see them all as grand as Grand Moff Tarkin, but he was the only competant officer and once he was lost, no other empire Officer ever lived up to that standard. They remained as 2-bit villains in the rest of the series, amounting to very little. That is what Dreadlords were in TFT. They were generic villains that tried to deceive but amounted to nothing.

Malganis doesnt make up for all other Dreadlords being incompetant any more than Grand Moff Tarkin does for all other Empire officers in the SW trilogy. They were all written to be foiled.

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You could literally say the same about any part of the Legion, Old Gods, Nerubians… Literally almost any race that you don’t play as.

He was put in charge of coordinating with the Lich King (put there by an Eredar, not the Nathrezim) to lay the groundwork for the Legion’s invasion. Dreadlords don’t need nearly as large of portals as their superiors the Pitlords, Eredar, and other Legion commanders. They lay the groundwork, not by being the vanguard but by using manipulation and ploys.

Did you play Wc2? Because I feel like we played totally different games… Doomhammer was anything but a generic villain.

I’ll refer to my previous posts for this one.

That’s not a criticism of Dreadlords, that’s a statement of fact for every story ever. Characters are intentionally written to fulfill roles. Let’s not forget your core argument is that Dreadlords exist solely to be an antagonist for Sylvanas in TFT. Yet this is clearly untrue. With the Dreadlords controlling Garithos, you can argue that their influence is what led to the Blood Elves being separated from the Alliance, and having to turn towards Illidan. This isn’t even including them using the Alliance against the Scourge that is now under Arthas’s control (due to, once again, the Lich King. It’s not a shortcoming of the Dreadlords that they lost control, it is a byproduct of the Lich King fooling the Eredar, and thus their subordinates the Dreadlords).

And once again, that’s not a negative trait. In conflicts between player controlled entities and the story controlled people, it is not satisfying to “win” a campaign just to lose in the following cinematic. You could argue that Sylvanas played the same role in RoC. That does not make her a bad character, nor lazily written. If they lose, but through a triumph of the player rather than their own incompetence (which is the case with both Sylvanas and Dreadlords), then they are a perfectly valid and legitimate character.

There’s really no valid argument otherwise.

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I think you should replay sylvanas campaigns and refresh your memory

Varimathras “reply” was more than clear for some of us…
if u see at the start of the video, Sylvanas doesn’t even seem to be happy to be slaughtering

its funny you keep mentioning things that never happened in game…the dreadlords never cared about Kelthuzad nor the book of medivh…not in-game no matter what retcon happened after.

PD: sweetheart I get you like a fictional character, so so do I, you need to understand things are more simple,sylvanas campaign was meant to give protagonism to sylvanas not to any dread-lord, which are fictional characters, proof of this is that,many of the writters from back then are not the sames from now,and if this was all anticipated WoW wouldnt have to many retcons, but it doesn,because wow story changes in order to better suit the ongoing expansion,
no matter what you think about dreadlords,the story of that time is that what u saw in the game and not what you imagined it to be,
I suggest instead of trying to recreate something that never happened,
make a fanfic or a comic,or a series with the dreadlords…thats way more productive than imagined what happened.

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It was right after she tried to ambush, torture and murder Arthas. Mephistroth is right here, Sylvanas’ thirst for revenge against the Prince was her main motivation in TFT. It’s only in WoW vanilla that she was set to expand her domain in the Plaguelands (i.e., the Tirisfal Glades and Silverpine).

Here Mephistroth tries to give the Legion a possible plan of a new invasion, that is by taking the Book of Medivh, open another portal, this time for Kil’jaeden. It does work in such custom maps as Azeroth Wars and Lordaeron: The Aftermath. Of course, in WoW, they went a completely different route (reminiscent of the War of the Ancients).

This might be some of the deepest overlooked turns in the story - yet are you sure Garithos had been controlled by Detheroc before the debacle with Kael’thas? The campaign shows his mind controlled self as not riding around slaying the Scourge at Alterac but docilely staying in his camp… But it indeed can be read either way, and I wouldn’t press the matter that Blizzard clearly implied the boring one of the accounts of the events.

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lore went to hell with WOW, and millenials don’t even know what is WC3. we are foocked.
I just imagine WOW never existed and WC4 was cancelled lol. so yeah, WC ended in WC3.

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You could literally say the same about any part of the Legion, Old Gods, Nerubians… Literally almost any race that you don’t play as.

Yes, but what matters is context to the story. If we look at Sylvanas in context of ROC, she can be viewed as a conflict for Arthas. At no point is she made out to be a sympathetic character, even if her goals were noble and her end was tragic. We don’t look at her in ROC and say ‘Damn, she’s totally gonna get revenge on Arthas!’. We look at that story and see that she was intentionally written to show Arthas’ cruelty. By all means, Sylvanas’ story could have ended right there. Her story for ROC was told. Based on ROC, we have no reason to expect any more out of her character after she was turned into a Banshee.

Yet we did get more story, and we saw her turning Forsaken, and we saw her usurping power as an independent from the Scourge. This is not anything that is hinted in ROC. You wouldn’t extrapolate any of her TFT story based on ROC’s events. Only in retrospect can we look at the story and say ‘Oh, she’s totally gonna get revenge’, ONLY with the context of TFT in mind. Without TFT, her story would have ended.

This is the point I make with how Dreadlords are portrayed in TFT. Mephistroth implies that Varimathras is feigning loyalty to Sylvanas in TFT based on the characterization of Dreadlords. Yet this is completely nonsensical within the context of TFT’s plot. Varimathras is written to show how badass Sylvanas is, how she is capable of out-manipulating the Dreadlords to the point where she gains the loyalty of one out of sheer fear. There is no indication that Varimathras is somehow even able to double cross Sylvanas at the moment he kills Balnazzar. For that to make sense in TFT, we need to be SHOWN this.

This is the same point I make about Sylvanas in ROC. We can’t look back and say she was totally gonna take revenge on Arthas within the context of ROC. That only happens in TFT. ROC’s depiction of Sylvanas is one of pure tragedy. That is why a lot of people are skeptical of the changes the Devs are planning to make in Reforged by adding more focus on Sylvanas; it’s a move done in retrospect that may affect the pacing of ROC’s story.

The point here is the context of the story is important because it drives characterization. Varimathras is not in a position of power and manipulation when he begs for his life. Sylvanas is not in a position to exact revenge when Arthas takes her soul. These are things shown in later arcs, in different stories.

Everything I have said about Dreadlords is to support my point that TFT’s story is set out to show them losing power. This is not to say Dreadlords are weak or pathetic or lack any deceptive power; it’s to show that they are fallible and can be underminded and are not always in control or able to double cross. This is all within the context of TFT. It’s only in WoW that we see this tone completely removed because the Dreadlords are shown to not actually have died in TFT and we are shown that they did double cross Sylvanas; and that can not be retroactively applied to TFT because the tone of the story was completely different.

That’s not a criticism of Dreadlords, that’s a statement of fact for every story ever. Characters are intentionally written to fulfill roles. Let’s not forget your core argument is that Dreadlords exist solely to be an antagonist for Sylvanas in TFT. Yet this is clearly untrue. With the Dreadlords controlling Garithos, you can argue that their influence is what led to the Blood Elves being separated from the Alliance, and having to turn towards Illidan. This isn’t even including them using the Alliance against the Scourge that is now under Arthas’s control (due to, once again, the Lich King. It’s not a shortcoming of the Dreadlords that they lost control, it is a byproduct of the Lich King fooling the Eredar, and thus their subordinates the Dreadlords).

I don’t believe the Dreadlords controlled Garithos while the Blood Elf thing was happening. I don’t think this is the intention of TFT’s story.

As for TFT’s story, we could replace the Dreadlords with Garithos and the story would not have changed. They acted purely as a means to an end- to show Sylvanas usurping Lordaeron. Anything good shown about the Dreadlords is no different than any of the wins Garithos had against the Scourge prior to him being mind-controlled. He was a means to an end - a character brought in to reinforce Sylvanas’ cold nature and manipulation.

And once again, that’s not a negative trait. In conflicts between player controlled entities and the story controlled people, it is not satisfying to “win” a campaign just to lose in the following cinematic. You could argue that Sylvanas played the same role in RoC. That does not make her a bad character, nor lazily written. If they lose, but through a triumph of the player rather than their own incompetence (which is the case with both Sylvanas and Dreadlords), then they are a perfectly valid and legitimate character.

I think this is the crux of your misinterpretation of my words.

I did not say the Dreadlords are bad characters. I never said that. You are projecting that as if I said that. I said the Dreadlords in TFT are written to be foiled. And I explain above that Sylvanas was written in ROC to be foiled. This doesn’t make any of them bad characters.

The point of all this is to make a point that Varimathras was not in a position of double crossing Sylvanas within the context of TFT. He was taken by surprise. His actions were done on the spot. Any information we are given afterwards about him deceiving Sylvanas should not be used to support any deceptive motives in TFT, because that is not what was shown to us.

It could be implied that he was not going to be fully loyal to her, but that assumption is not a solid basis to say that is what happened in TFT. Just like we can assume that Sylvanas may seek revenge on Arthas in ROC, we can’t assume that’s what was going to happen based solely on ROC itself. The context is key to the characterization of the Dreadlords in TFT.

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Millennials, also known as Generation Y or Gen Y, are the generational demographic cohort following Generation X and preceding Generation Z. There are no precise dates for when this cohort starts or ends; demographers and researchers typically use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years.

Technically not entirely wrong but also not entirely accurate either. Gen Z definitely wouldn’t.

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one again people here diverting from WARCRAFT 3 story…
I cant talk about every multi-universe warcraft has,or retcon,or fanfiction.
we should only speak about warcraft 3,after all that’s the game being remade…

at the time when frozen throne launched,world of Warcraft was in development but story wise it wasn’t a thing…
dreadlords were made to fill a role in there…theres no more than that…dont try to make a different story with whatever you imagined.

son, you don’t understand how this works,nothing was planned…
sylvanas was a character that they made to be an obstacle for Arthas, i love her but thats what she was…creators didnt count fans would like her so much and were interested in her, they saw the character had potential and expanded her in the second expansion.
IF this was all intentional…they would have added more development into her during reign of chaos…thats how it works…thats the reason they want to do it now. thats how a story works…

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