Anduin Wrynn - I think I misjudged the guy because my understanding was incomplete

Community General Discussion
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So truth be told while my forum avatar is a night elf (and it was thus in vanilla) I’ve since mostly played Horde beginning with Cataclysm. I do also level an Alliance - mostly to see the game storyline from their perspective.

But it turns out that the story - as read out in the game, is grossly incomplete - especially with respect to The Boy King.

I’ll admit I’ve been pretty harsh on Anduin. Bluntly it’s a lot easier to get excited about the simplistic and shallow black versus white minor characters in the game. Anduin, based on what I see in the game seems too indecisive and frankly - weak. But he’s not!

And I’ll also admit I have not read all the books - even resorting to playing the role of a “simple farmer forced to take up a sword” when doing RP on those realms because I’m actually (as it turns out) rather ignorant (and playing an admitted ignorant character gets me off the hook for my mistakes)

So a couple days ago a RP friend sent me an email to my personal address (rather unusual) with a link to a YouTube streamer fella who did a spot on Anduin Wrynn.

And… well… I liked the video and I now like the complexity of the Anduin character as I understand it much more than I did in the past.

So I thought I’d link it to you all and see if anyone wanted to share a reaction to this:

The TRAGIC Life Of Anduin Wrynn (youtube.com)

BTW I don’t think I’ve ever started a thread on GD so if you think I’m wrong please beat me to death with my keyboard so I get the full experience of being here :wink:

But if you agree with me that the game doesn’t do justice to this character’s complete story, what do you think Blizz can do to flesh it all out and help those of us who get most of our lore from the game gather a more complete picture?

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I wouldn’t consider Anduin weak. He’s been delivered the work payload without choice from his father and is trying his best to maintain peace between the Horde and Alliance.

I’d like to think its working…

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Thanks to that video I linked this is what I’m coming to understand.

I wish there was a better way for Blizz to communicate details of lore within the game - because it seems that unless you devour every bit of media they put out - you can easily misunderstand key protagonists.

Those of us who mostly play the game, and don’t have time to read every book - we have a skewed perspective.

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Yeeeeeee… kekw. If only.

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I think they have portrayed his character really well in the game. He’s been through so much, but even so has kept faith in the good of all. He seems to be struggling coming to terms with himself now, but that’s how people like him are. They are hardest on themselves.

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The saddest part is they acknowledged this recently, but they have no idea what they can do to fix it.

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I don’t know but in my head I’m stirring up this idea. It might suck.

But do you remember the NPC named Lorewaker Han in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, standing right next to Cho up top near the Mogushan Palace? When you want to solo old content you’d talk to him and he’d chat at you a bit about the lore surrounding some of the content you wanted to do.

What if when we wanted to solo or run old content with our friends there was a NPC we could talk to who (at best) would show you a cutscene that put that timeline in lore context or (at worst and perhaps most frugal for Blizz) would offer up a voiceover summary that told you a story about where all this fit into lore.

Kind of a Lore Emporium you could visit to get a Cliff Notes version of major plot points you may have missed.

I’ve been playing this silly game for 19 years and I admit I’m pretty ignorant of it all (surprisingly so).

But since I still don’t have time to read a dozen novels - maybe this would be a path Blizz could take to deepen the experience.

They could even have Lore Guy who might let you drill down about individual characters - not just the broader storyline.

AI is already entering the game - why not have a conversational version in-game (in the form of a NPC) that could even answer player questions within strict guardrails?

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That would help and people have suggested even simpler things like a bloody in game Lore Compendium.

I think this was actually brought up to Blizzard but they seemed like they didn’t want to go that route (for whatever reason. Likely because if I’m correct people took that idea from FF and its now a pride thing lol)

Honestly the easiest method would just be to have that in game lore compendium that summarizes every expansion, and all the main characters of note and they’d basically do the heavy leg work of getting people onboarded to this games mess of a story.

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My personal conspiracy theory is that they’re trying to write Anduin how they wanted to write Med’an (apart from the obvious Prince/King of SW vs. Guardian thing), but using some of the lessons they learned from writing Med’an.

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Maybe they were afraid that it would dampen book sales but IMO it might actually boost that revenue stream.

It’s a story that has gone on for MORE than the 19 years I’ve been playing the title.

I understand production costs but with language-learning models seems they could have AI digest the books and everything else then not just respond to player questions but also prompt the player (because many of us may not know enough to ask the right questions)

Maybe this would be a fun project for our new Microsoft overlords to show off their shiney-blingey-bing-thing :wink:

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Give me an in game library with clickable books for all the major lore that’s relevant to the story please!

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I feel the issue is with the density of information. Reading a book I might spend 20 minutes reading a highly detailed section about a few major points (plot, character development, etc.), but 20 minutes of WoW questing is like a a dozen major (face value) points, interspersed with killing board.

It’s hard to cling onto so many details when there’s little repetition sooo many details.

ESO is super repetitive and has much slower arcs for characters, and the story is broken up so much over the year. It makes it easy to follow, but of course repetition makes sense the story a lot shorter and breaking up the campaign makes you run of story during each update faster. I think they have a good balance overall and I’d like to see WoW have a crack at it.

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The problem with Anduin isn’t that he’s weak or even a bad character. It’s that he’s a narrative black hole.

Any scene that involves him is automatically about him. No one’s issues are ever treated as important as his, no one’s opinion is ever treated as valid as his. Any character who dares disagree with him on anything will be depicted as misguided at best and a villain at worst. Even if their opposition to him makes perfect sense in-context.
Not even the other writers pets like Sylvanas or Thrall can overpower Anduin’s absolute control of the narrative spotlight.

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Anduin was given the moral high ground in Mists of Pandaria, but that was also the first time they gave him any real character development. Considering that he was an idealistic teenager at the time, the fact that he was arguing for peace in a world at war made sense. How else is the son of Varian Wyrnn going to rebel?

His leadership in Legion and BFA needed to transition him into King of Stormwind and leader of the Alliance, which I think is where the storytelling went astray. Of course he will take the throne after his father, but I don’t think he should have been slotted into leader of the Alliance as Varian 2.0. I don’t care how intelligent or well-intentioned or well-prepared he was to become King of Stormwind, the Alliance consists of leaders who have centuries if not millennia on Anduin. It’s great that he’s built relationships of trust with Velen, Jaina, Genn, and even the dwarves, but that only means that they might accept him as part of their peer group not that they’re ready to put Anduin in charge of everything.

In order to make this even a little bit convincing, then, the more experienced leaders like Tyrande had to be placed in a position of irrationality and Anduin’s decisions had to be framed as correct (even when they were arguably not). Unfortunately it all seemed a bit forced and the storytelling was a bit heavy-handed in order to pull it off, but frankly there have been worse eras in WoW’s lore.

Then, enter the Jailer. Anduin had to have a fall from grace at some point in order to develop as a character, especially after finally taking up the sword in BFA. Instead of Anduin simply traveling down a darker path — I would have enjoyed getting to see him explore the Void as opposite of the Light, perhaps under the guidance of Alleria, since he is after all a priest and we are spec’d for it — he just had his free will stripped away, committed some atrocities, and then admitted later that the power felt pretty good. Yeah, Anduin. Power feels good. Remember when you battle rezzed the entire freakin’ Alliance at Lordaeron? Felt good, right? Sheesh.

Anyway, I’m glad that Anduin’s character has finally evolved from “idealistic pacifist boy” to “grizzled veteran struggling with PTSD,” because now his story might get interesting in a way that is actually useful to Warcraft players who struggle with the aftermath of such things. As we learned from the opening cinematic of Pandaria, “to ask why we fight is like asking why the leaves fall…it is in our nature.”

Anduin has never considered himself a fighter like his father, but he is. He’s never thought he wanted or enjoyed power, but it turns out he does. Does that make him a bad person? Is he “worthy” of the Light? Is the Light even the force that he believed it to be, if it can be so dominated? How does he recover from the very real trauma he’s experienced? How does he continue to serve, as in his heart he knows that eventually he must? These are real questions and I hope that Blizzard takes advantage of the opportunity to address even one of them in his story going forward.

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