I’m aware. That was the real ending of Arthas.
The mess they created in SL was the new team doubling down on their efforts to erase the old teams version of the game.
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Arthas killing his own father and onward was long after he was dead from picking up Frostmourne. He was then an agent of the LK. That means everything from killing his own father to his fall the jailer was pulling his strings.
Stratholme was lost. Arthas not only trapped his own men, he trapped himself there as well. It was a get it done or die trying thing.
And yes, his story was over, and they should have left it at him falling at the Frozen Throne and been done with it instead of what this poor writing team did to him.
Blizzard already brought him back in the story for SL and what they did with it was crappy writing. They could have literally had his soul become complete and just go through the damn system like he was supposed to in the first place. We really dont need to know anything further than that.
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didn’t uther also get teased as well as a few others?
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You shut your heretic mouth. Arthas will never be forgotten.
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/cries while waiting for WoTLK classic to release
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That’s more intended function than intended purpose. The core purpose of the army is to defend the homeland (excepting despotic tyrannies, where the core purpose of an army may be a lot worse, but turning against the tyrant will then look like a good thing). He’s defying an order because he believes it’s necessary to protect his home.
There’s a reason the cinematic of him returning to Lordaeron is showing the city showering him with roses. They believed (wrongly, they were about to find out) that he had succeeded in stopping the undead threat. When he comes back, if you watch the cinematic, Terenas greets him and says, “ah, my son. I knew you’d be victorious” (hard to hear, but I remember looking this up a long time ago cause I was curious).
The view of the king and the people in such a story would be that if the prince was right, and succeeded, he’d be hailed as a hero and the king would instantly forgive and greet him.
I agree. The one difference is that Arthas’s soul not being in control was there from the start of the story, whereas with Sylvanas the implication was that she had her soul (and actually, was moving about AS her soul, when Arthas pulled her soul out of her body and made her into a banshee that could possess others, eventually just reclaiming her own body). She was portrayed as just being a single-state soul, like everything was up until Shadowlands. (Like the Uther that appeared in Halls of Reflection was THE Uther, and the Terenas that appeared at the Frozen Throne battle with the Lich King was THE Terenas). The idea of a soul-split was a Shadowlands creation.
But her moral complicity was always implied to be very little or nothing, even without that retcon, because Blizzard had originally had an idea that undeath (at least, necromancy-based undeath, to differentiate it from random spirits that didn’t move on) robbed a soul of its connection to the “Light” and that this in turn suppressed the positive side of their being. Like carving out the part of a person’s brain capable of feeling empathy. It’d make anyone into a monster on a long enough timeframe.
Blizzard kind of semi-abandoned this. It’s not completely clear. It might still apply to most general “Forsaken” characters, or it might not be a thing and they might now try to explain the Forsaken as just suffering a severe PTSD (the Calia plotline of her helping Forsaken seems to go that route, because regular Forsaken should have little in common with a being reanimated with Light magic). The soul-split stuff puts Sylvanas into a special category few would fall into now.
Honestly, I kind of regret knowing all this. The lore is so trashed from Shadowlands. I actually always liked the idea of a Sylvanas redemption (though originally back in the early days, I’d have assumed it’d come by restoring her soul’s ability to connect to the Light). I’m not bothered by Sylvanas getting redeemed, I just feel like all the retcons were poorly thought out and the misuse of Arthas so epically bad.
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I’ve learned that trying to have a story discussion about this game is like trying to stick your face into a hornets nest. There’s just nothing to be gained from doing it because every thread about story invariably boils down to: DANUSER BAD UPDOOTS TO THE LEFT.
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I don’t think Arthas deserves a redemption, but he DOES deserve a better conclusion than… that.
I honestly didn’t care that much about Arthas but let’s face the facts: He was basically the face of Warcraft for years. Warcraft 3s story was pretty dang good and is responsible for a lot of Warcrafts popularity, and WotLK, regardless of if it was your fave expansion or not (It’s not mine) was the peak of WoWs popularity.
The fact that Blizzard couldn’t even put his model into the cinematic was pathetic. There wasn’t even any reason to believe Arthas’ soul was used to corrupt Anduin until one mechanic in the fight itself. It was a reasonable assumption, yes, but Arthas was never even referenced till then. Then they just show a little blue ball, say that it’s Arthas, and have arguably the most hated character in WoW right now (and Danuser’s favourite character) basically tell Arthas to piss off forever and never be remembered again.
It just reeks of disrespect towards a character that, regardless of how you feel about him, basically built the Warcraft franchise to the greatest height of it’s popularity. He doesn’t deserve a redemption, no. But he does deserve more respect
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To be fair everyone agrees that a better conclusion was needed but I disagree that he was a puppet when he died in wrath of lich king. Well maybe you could argue he was a puppet to his darker nature and lack of humanity…
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Arthas was a character that people enjoyed and people dont care about sylvanus bc she was too “mysterious” for too long and it pissed people off to see her “manipulated”.
Arthas was never manipulated, or even if he was he never tried to redeem himself, he believed he was doing the right thing and forged his own path to hell with his good intentions. He stayed on that path that was to damn him because he was too far gone. We saw ALL of that character development and his path to hatred and revenge. He was a well written character.
Sylvanus was a mary sue who had no character development outside of the books, only saying she outsmarted all of us and had a master plan to make death fair.
Even GARROSH was a better written character bc his motivations were dead easy to follow. Power hungry xenophobe was based.
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Arthas was controlled by the Lich King and owns it.
Sylvanas is clinging to the idea that “I SErvE NobODy” because empowered female mumbo jumbo.
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Some people mistakenly think that in order to be a good story, it has to end the way they want it to.
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Very, very incorrect.
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Some of these comments show their fanboyism for Arthas, defending his actions while condemning Sylvanas’.
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I think Baines end should come between two sesame seed buns 
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His story may be over but he’ll never be forgotten.
He is the greatest warcraft character ever created and there will never be another one of his caliber.
Arthas fans have a right to be upset. Arthas got shafted thanks to Blizzard.
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Arthas was scum. One thing though, I’ll miss his theme. One of the best musical pieces in the game.
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Of course he is scum. He is a villain. When i was younger back in 2008. He scared the hell out of me, he was a damn good villain.
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He was a good kid. Had the makings for a good king.
Blizz done messed up with this Slands bs they did with him. >:(
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They took a character that was the face of WoW since WC3, a story people have loved for years and the coolest character wow’s ever had and reduced him to a fart cloud worth 35 anima. They then rapid fired a sylvanis redemption one xpac after her genocide during his death. All we wanted was one last cool thing from him before he left
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