All of these things show people failing to meet Anduin’s expectations.
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those are all failures. not “seem to”. anduin failed. he acknowledges it himself.
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Funny way to fail when the narrative proves you were right all along… we won´t reach an agreement here. Continue with your Blanduin worship, but don´t feel angry when some of us with actual funcional braincells see him for what he is: the pet Gary Stu character of one of Blizz´s leading and most influential writers, the “nuMed´an”, period.
I think the larger issue re: Anduin being stale/generic/flat is that he’s a static character. His mindset and approach never change, regardless of what happens. Even if he’s shown to pause, reflect, and express guilt or remorse, he doesn’t change as a character. He is the moral compass of the game—not just to the Alliance, which is dangerous ground to tread in a universe centered around a two faction conflict.
Although, to be fair, I think this is something that will change radically in the coming patches. I think the “thrones run red with betrayal” segment of the story is about to kick up, and Anduin is one of the few behinds that occupies an actual throne at the moment.
So what would make you happy?
Anduin’s character being rewritten to think “Prejudice is awesome! Let’s kill anyone different from us! Disproportionate revenge is the best! Let’s slaughter orphans when they kill soldiers!”?
Anduin’s character is usually going to be the one in the moral right, because Anduin is Anduin. He’s an idealist who wants peace and happiness and free hugs for everyone.
It’s hard to make his desires a truly bad thing in any objective sense.
They can be made to conflict with other equally important desires. (Ex. Anduin being concerned with failing the overall war effort if he diverts forces to Darkshore vs Tyrande feeling that if they don’t reclaim their lands now, they never will and for the Night Elves that would be an unfathomable loss.)
Or his good intentions may fail and cause suffering, because of things he couldn’t have possibly forseen, because he misjudged someone’s character or just because he naively hoped for the best when he probably shouldn’t have. (Or all three. Like the gathering.)
But it’s hard to make a case that peace isn’t something to aspire towards.
So yeah. Anduin’s always going to be the one who would have been “right” if not for [insert thing here].
He is still flawed and he still suffers failures and setbacks.
His chief flaw is the same as his chief virtue… he wants peace and happiness and free hugs for everyone. But some people genuinely don’t deserve hugs. And some people don’t want hugs and will use the hug as an opportunity to crush you to death.
That’s the core conflict for his character.
Trying to find a balance between his dreams and reality. It’s a theme present in most of the stories featuring him.
Even in the post Dazar’alor dialogue, most people seem to think he just agrees 100% with Jaina. I view his response as agreeing with both Jaina and Genn.
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But which character truly has changed, fundamentally in terms of their world view completely altering and everything? Which characters are examples of what you would consider not static? Ironically one of the characters I can think of who hasn’t really been static and actually changed in their behavior and world outlook is Jaina, who also seems to be despised on this forum.
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I like Anduin as a character, but I agree with these sentiments and don’t think he should’ve been made High King. I think it would’ve been best if the Alliance leaders had gotten together to determine who would lead now that Varian was gone (and, frankly, it should be someone with way more experience than a human).
I would say this is clinging to the old “Humans and Orcs” thing but we haven’t had an Orcish Warchief in 5 years, so I’m not sure why Anduin has to be the High King.
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Same. Funny how often people bring up “humies & greenskins” whenever human dominance of the alliance narrative has been brought up, but are silent whenever non-orc warchiefs are brought up.
I’d say its more the fact that having a human leader means Blizzard can spend less time cooking up a compelling Alliance story and focus on digging themselves into deeper holes with the Horde story.
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Criticism of Anduin is not a defense of other poorly written characters. Anduin is just boring, and is being boring as one of two prominent, leading figures for the game. Sylvanas is radically different, but written no less poorly (unless some major plot unveil down the road can somehow salvage her, which I doubt).
If we want to hit a little close to home, Varian is a shining example of a character being shaped over time. He started out as not much more than an Alliance mirror to Garrosh, but he was willing to place faith in the Banshee Queen by the time he bit the dust.
Velen’s faith in the light was tempered by the end of Legion.
Or, for a more extreme example, Garrosh actually changed a fair deal throughout the course of Cataclysm. MoP turned that on it’s head and made him dumb-corruption-smash, granted, but there were stories littered throughout his time in the spotlight where he was slowly learning how to lean a little more towards honor and less towards bloodthirst.
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I never found Anduin boring. At least not the way everyone seem to see it. Honestly when I think of Anduin I keep thinking of Suikoden and how he is the archetype leader of the group. He functions more as a figure head but does have some say in military matters.
I’d point out the Alliance has also always been more rigid and traditional then the Horde. If anything its is a stark contrast that the Alliance leadership has remains under human hands.
Here is my prediction though, depending on how long WoW as a game will last, I actually expect Anduin will end up “disappearing”(if it work for Varian, it will work for him) for a while only for him to later end up us head of the final/penultimate expansions.
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Having literally ZERO input from his disgusting self on my Horde gameplay will sufice for me… ask Alliance players sick of the character what they would like to see regarding him.
From my part I just want what I want from Jaina too: not to see or hear of them ever again (not indirectly by Horde NPCs making comments relating them and much less directly, period).
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Okay.
So all this complaining from you and you’ve only seen his character… once.
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I hear about him 24/7 thanks to the moron Baine. I had to see him making his best incarnation of “moral highground know-it-all” in Sadfang´s useless cinematic. Anytime Disney Princess Jaina appears (and devs seem obssesed with putting her self insert behind go down our throats), he gets mentioned or aluded. And this is only this expac, not taking into account me literally having to babysitt him in MoP, quest for in in MoP, hear about him in all and ever novel written by Golden (ergo ruined like 3 pre-expac novels for me), etc.
When I say I don´t want to hear or see him EVER again I mean it… put him in the real backburner (same as Drektar) for at least a patch ffs.
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Damn it, that means Sylvanas is Windy.
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So basically you don’t want the King of Stormwind to be a major lore character.
Seems reasonable.
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Well, I don´t want him to be a major lore character for the Horde narrative. He shouldn´t exist the same way Ji doesn´t exist for you, people. This cattering to the human leaders is ridiculous.
And I know a lot of ally posters sick to death with “muh Humans” trope too, but as I said before, you better ask them what they want.
That expectation is as silly as Alliance posters expecting Sylvanas/Vol’jin/Garrosh/Thrall not to exist in their game. They are major figures in the universe whose decisions impact all of Azeroth. They are going to be around. They are going to have short stories, videos and entire novels dedicated to them.
That is as it should be.
Ji is a minor character who barely exists even in the Horde narrative.
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I think the idea that the Horde and Alliance stories should never interact at all is kind of silly.
But beyond the cinematics, when in this expansion has Anduin made an appearance in the Horde story? I don’t even recall it much.
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Battle for Lordaeron and rescuing Talanji.
I don’t count the first because it’s basically shared content.
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Yeah and rescuing Talanji you have to rescue her… from Stormwind… where he is King…
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