A lot of people on the forums seem to go on about being sick of Anduin being a goody-goody, never doing anything wrong, etc. I disagree with this view of his character. His naive methods of pursuing peace and underestimating the intentions of his adversaries in the Horde lead to the people of the Alliance being punished dearly via the War of Thorns and Teldrassil. In the battle for Lordaeron he even acknowledges this. The character arc of Anduin seems to be gruelingly coming to terms with lessons handed down from his father that peace, while a noble aspiration, must be fought for.
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But that’s the thing, he never suffers any of the consequences of his peacenik attitude. It’s always someone else or some other group of people. It’s like red shirts in star trek dying to give the main characters someone to emote over only people are far more attached to those who keep dying because of him than they are to Anduin.
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I think Anduin becomes a sort of catchall for the Alliance in general: unflinchingly upright, just, and unified. When seeds of dissent are planted, they seem to be immediately quelled and things return to the status quo. The result is a pretty stale situation. I think this is likely going to shift in the coming patches, but it has taken several years of begging for the Alliance to get something contentious to start that ball a’rolling.
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He nearly died to stop Garrosh from using the divine bell. He has had to sacrifice his dreams of a more peaceful Azeroth and I’d say the whole Gathering even has changed his view point, at least when it comes to the Horde. Lastly, he lost his father because his father pursued his belief that you can reason with the Horde/trust the Horde.
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I think another issue, other then the lack of repercussions, is the fact the narrative itself seems to always take his side in conflicts. This wouldnt be so bad if he wasn’t opposing half the playerbase.
If he wasn’t high king, and got called out for his plethora of bad decisions i may even like the guy, but as it stands he is just golden’s pet. He is both in a role a peaceful understanding person shouldnt be in (From a narrative and in universe standpoint) and wont ever truly be called out or allowed to grow as a character while written the way he is.
He is a flat, static character in a main characters position.
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Uh… no, he lost his father because of unreliable intelligence about the impending Legion invasion that nearly wiped out both faction armies.
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Oh right I forgot about how he got magic bones that can tell right from wrong, my bad. That was definitely a downside. The only one of those things I can somewhat agree counts as a loss for him is his father dying and even that resulted in him becoming high king despite being woefully underqualified.
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As oppose to what happened to many other characters in WoW? Malfurion was stabbed in the back and is now perfectly fine. Jaina fought an entire raid and survived. Thrall’s elemental bond quest tore him apart and he ended up better for it.
Malfurion and Thrall are hardly the best examples to try and disprove your argument here. Malfurion less so than Thrall because of his lack of prominence but still.
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It doesn’t though. Anduin is written and even says it himself that he is/was naive about Sylvanas. The story punishes the night elf nation and by extension the Alliance heavily for this.
Yeah ultimately I would agree with this but
I think this is a lot of how WoW story telling has carried on… except for the Horde who has people like Vol’jin just take an arrow to the knee regardless of their actions because the writers decided they didn’t wanna write a story involving him as Warchief.
I thought that moment in Before the Storm when he tried to change the opinions of Genn and Turalyon by reuniting them with the now undead Alonsus Faol was a great moment in showing one of Anduin’s flaws. He knows he’s in the right and thus has to make others see it his way, regardless of how they will feel about it.
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You say Anduin never personally suffers for his actions. But the same can be said of say Tyrande, who because of Tedrassil ended up getting a power up. Genn lost his city but ended up as a powerful worgen. And it is all but certain Vol’jin is gonna end up as some powerful loa when all is said and done.
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i think that anduin is suffering, like all current characters from the biggest problem of the story.
Teldrassil.
the escalation was just too much, like to a point that the only logical answer would and eye for and eye.
why? because this isn’t the first time.
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You cannot seriously compare Tyrande and Anduin. She never puts her ideals before protecting her own people and even took on the Night Warrior ritual despite having no idea of what the future consequences of it might be to avenge them after the Horde slaughtered them.
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By take his side in conflicts i mean he never needs to change. He always keeps the moral highground and never steps down. He makes mistakes, sometimes big ones, but even then, he is portrayed as well meaning and fully deserving of forgiveness. that’s why i say the narrative takes his side in things, his biggest change in character was when he decided sylvanas wasn’t redeemable, and even then, he acts like the entire horde would be perfectly willing to be rid of her.
He has never gone through character development and is extremely one note, which is why i say he’s a flat, static character.
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getting a power up and paying consequences are two different things.
Tyrande payed the consequences for her choices, and her choice was to not fight alongside her people bur rather focusing on leading the evacuation.
Would things be different if she decided to fight? maybe, maybe not.
the point is, tyrande and her people payed for it. those are the consequences.
and now she is dealing with it, that is why she decided to go ultra instinct at a great risk, if that gives her the vengeance she desires.
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Which gave him magic bones that tell him if what he is doing is right and have apparently had no long term physical repercussions beyond that.
He didn’t sacrifice his dreams. He just came to the conclusion that Sylvanas would never be open to peace and he could only achieve his dreams with her no longer leading the Horde.
Blizzard has been pretty clear at this point that he lost his father because the Legion outmanoeuvred the Horde and Alliance and lead them into a trap. Every time this has been addressed in lore the answer as pretty much been that Varian was screwed the moment they walked into that trap.
The only characters assuming otherwise are ones without a full picture of the events and who have heavy biases, mainly Genn who still thinks Sylvanas did it specifically to get the Alliance killed when we know from Sylvanas’s PoV that that wasn’t the case.
I have seen you argue how we have overcome impossible odds before but that is pretty much treating plot armor as a canon in game factor in a scenario where the writers intentionally had us not have plot armor. Its like saying you totally could have saved everyone on Teldrassil if only you and Genn hadn’t escaped through that portal and so you abandoned them all to die.
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I would agree that the narrative does still take his side in things because he is a protagonist. I just wanted to point out that he does do things wrong and these things are shown to have consequences in the story.
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That is the issue, he is thr protaganist despite only representing half the playerbase, and more importantly
IS AN NPC IN A VIDEO GAME
Generally the protangonist is the player character in video games
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If he was a diplomat and accompanied Jaina and the Alliance adventurers to reunite Kul’Tiras it would have been a better use of his character----considering the majority of Before the Storm highlighted Anduin’s ability to serve the Alliance as a diplomat between the various factions, rather than a supreme commander/blue Warchief.
But for that scenario to pan out Tyrande and Genn would have had to be co-leading the Alliance since Legion (which should have happened).
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