Probably because he’s fated to be everyone’s god-king and lead everyone to glorious victory against the spooky darkness, so he has to be this perfect paragon everyone should be able to get behind. He can’t punish the Horde because in the far-off future he’ll be leading them.
I’m sure there’s something there about how a wolf only leads his pack but the lion is king of all animals or some stupid metaphor like this.
Which happens again next patch with Tyrande, where even her adopted daughter is telling her to bend the knee to King Anduin.
That’s what happens when you give Sylvanas a mystery trump card and revolve everything else around it.
Odds are any and all events from this expansion will be made mute by the next one.
You’re confusing good with Anduin.
You’re almost right. Anduin is boring. He is a 1 dimensional character that makes no sense and is not interesting. He’s a foil for Blizzard to hamfist contrived content into the narrative.
And Sylvanas is incredibly boring for the same reason.
But Anduin always suing for peace isn’t the same thing as good. Which is also a big part of why he is boring. Because if he was consistently GOOD then his actions would be varied. Doing the same thing all the time isn’t the result of an alignment compulsion.
A good person shows mercy to those who deserve it and retribution to those who deserve that. A person who only shows mercy is just brain damaged, or in this case, poorly written. Anduin as a character who favors peace makes no sense. His father was a warrior. His surrogate father was a warrior. He lives in a warrior culture in the shadow of the war that nearly annihilated his people.
Blizzard didn’t develop his character. They dictated it. And they did it just to give excuses to bad ideas.
That’s why Anduin, and characters like him, are boring. It’s not because Anduin is “good”. Anduin is just a badly written character that makes no sense beneath a superficial veil of “morally good” but is actually just stupid. Anduin sucks because he’s not a character at all. He’s a tool, and a lame one at that.
Anduin’s main fault is that his idealism and plot requires everyone around him to take a huge swig of stupidity juice in order for it to work. That’s why most people hate his iteration: He poisons the plot by his presence. Varian had a similar problem, but it was more so due to the writers half-assing it.
Its also scary that so many people miss this and think those massive personality swings are “normal.”
I stopped reading there. But yes, Anduin’s ideals never being challenged is a huge story flaw.
Don’t worry.
Tyrande said some mean things to Anduin. So if Thalyssra is any indication, I’m sure he’ll be taking Stormwind Humans and defecting to the Horde soon.
Tongue in Cheek Answer: Because the Horde asked for it this time.
Realistic Answer: So the Horde can feel heroic.
Im at work so I can’t reply fully but I cant let this slide. We have a dominant world religion who literally tells people the opposite! “Turn the other cheer” is a well know phrase for a reason. Hell, you even have Lord of the Rings giving a similar prespective.
You should show mercy to everyone, regardless if they deserve it or not.
Screw mercy when it comes to genocidal maniacs. That’s my philosophy.
What’s that saying? “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, well said by the man with both of his eyes still.”
The problem with Anduin is that he is always right. Even when things should blow up in his face, they always come back around to work out in the end, at least for him.
Take the battle for Undercity. Launching an assault without a plan to deal with the blight should have been game over. I mean, it’s just incredibly foolhardy. In a realistic universe, he either dies or learns a terrible lesson. But no, there is Deus Ex Jaina to save the day at just the right moment.
Partway through the expansion, I thought the story was going to start giving him some consequences. There seemed to be tension in the Alliance and I was hoping that this seventeen year old would actually be allowed to screw up and grow and learn. But no, it all worked out so that he was right the whole time and everyone who didn’t listen was unreasonable.
Anduin is…well, he feels like a cliched YA protagonist.
Let the kid have an arc. The OP is right. The way Anduin is depicted does neither him nor the story any favours.
Food for thought. Anduin is pretty much the same exact person he was 10 years ago when he was only 7. In over a decade, he has done no growth as a person at all. He’s not allowed to. He has to be a two-dimensional plot device for the story that is forced to be told to maintain the gameplay.
Blizzard either cannot, or will not do subtle. Jaina herself was very much a, ‘peacemonger,’ back in WC3 and until MoP, same as Anduin is, but when it was time for her to grow, she went a complete 180 and tried to destroy Orgrimmar (gotta love how ONLY when the Horde was threatened did Thrall step up to stop cataclysm-level events), and then she went another 180 back to where she started, only to 180 again after the Sunreavers betrayed Dalaran…
I don’t think they could make Anduin grow or give him the storyline he needs right now without doing the same thing to him that they did to Jaina.
And while Anduin doesn’t charge, other characters have their agency destroyed in order for Anduin’s to maintain its superiority.
The entire Alliance narrative needs to be thrown out.
Salvaging it certainly seems to be a whole lot more work than is worthwhile, but at the same time, throwing it out completely undermines years of the game. What we need to see happen is a dissolution of central power, and leaders exerting their individual sovereignty further.
In a future conflict, for example, when Anduin asks Tyrande for aid, she should outright tell him no, or merely send a token force as the absolute minimum necessary, giving him the middle-finger for his failure to pursue the interests of her people while attempting to safeguard the future of the Alliance. At the same time she should field her own forces to keep a rigorous eye on the Horde, while also seeking out Sylvanas. There should be quests in the Alliance where Tyrande and her Army of the Black Moon sends the PC off to kill known Sylvanas Loyalists within the Horde as a message, without leaving an actual trace. That itself could provoke some interesting story for Horde players as they’re forced to draw the conclusion that the Alliance is responsible, but the victims are Loyalists, so what do they do? Defend the Loyalists who sold the Horde’s soul? Or ignore a founding principle of the Horde to avoid war with the Alliance?
If the Nelves take their vengeance over WoW’s remaining lifetime in a shadow war with the Horde where there is ONLY victory for them and suffering for the Horde’s worst elements, I think it could appease both sides.
Put it like this. If Tyrande cut off the head of Usha Eyegouge and impaled it on a tree, hanging her body from it along with other Orcs, I think Alliance players would view that as a good, “Win,” while Horde players, perhaps initially upset at losing a character who was prominent, have to accept Usha is one of those elements, like Sylvanas or Garrosh, who would’ve provoked conflict and the Horde is likely better off without her.
That in and of itself seems like a rather interesting route to take. De-fang the Horde by targeting the Warmongers and Loyalists, leaving only those like Baine or Thrall. Let Tyrande and the nelves prune the Horde of it’s weeds, against Anduin’s wishes, just to spit in the Horde’s eye and watch as it curls its fist before sighing and going back to behaving.
I can forgive the sin of being boring as I feel most good things are viewed as boring to begin with.
However, Anduin is a bit more than just a bore.
Looking at the conversations he has with Tyrande and Jaina after the Sylvanas-Saurfang duel shows a failing in diplomacy and consistency.
He’s dismissive of Tyrande’s grievances with the Horde and with Sylvanas, attempting to push her into signing an armistice without addressing her concerns - particularly Sylvanas.
He has no such qualms when speaking with Jaina, acknowledging Sylvanas’ lingering threat and offering no rebuke or chastisement for the Kul Tiran fleet still pursuing her.
A stark but deliberate contrast meant to continue the contrived build-up of tensions between the Night Elves (read: Tyrande) and the Alliance.
And if he said screw mercy we would all be dead. Using my earlier lord of the rings example, even Gollum ended up playing a role to end Sauron.
Waging a war on two front has always been a foolish proposition. With any luck though Im hoping Karma gets the better of the Horde and they end up suffering more than the Alliance.
Velen, Alexstrasza, Chen and a whole host of characters have not changed fundamentally. To say they dont grow is also false. Anduin is now leader of a nation trying his best to lead which is a far cry from a boy who did nothing in vanilla and galavanted off in Pandaria.
Not gonna lie.
The only reason I don’t like this is that it’s a very very clear route Blizzard can take to have someone in the Horde go “Hey why are we just letting the night elves kill us and not do anything” and that boil over into a new Warchief and a Fifth War and oh no i’ve gone cross-eyed.
I can’t even think of a scenario for how to do some sort of night elf appeasement + Anduin whipping that people want so much without antagonizing the Horde…but I think it would be safest to do a night elf appeasement + Anduin whipping without antagonizing the Horde.
Christie golden is orobably the last person on earth who should be telling young men how to act and grow.
Again, that’s exactly where things stood after MoP. Except that now Horde players feel even less heroic than we did then.
I saw a lot more, “Garrosh was right,” and, “Garrosh Hellscream, the True Warchief,” threads back then, than threads complaining about the Horde didn’t feel heroic. Granted I see a lot of, “Sylvanas for Warchief,” threads these days, so you’re probably right.
Are you saying old childless cat ladies might not know what makes a “Real Man”?