“The entire city must be purged.”
Um, do you think that maybe–
ZOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMM!!!
Just…dude. Chill. Chill for like five seconds.
ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!
My brother came up with a phrase to explain people like that:
“It’s like a puppy with an uzi.”
I think what happened with Arthas was panic, as you mentioned, and hubris…but I think it was also fear and regret. Just a horrible concoction of bad mojo.
And I think it’s important to not lose sight of the fact that this whole thing was engineered by a dreadlord to pretty much break him. Mal’ganis doesn’t get a pass.
No, he needed someone to superglue his shoes to the floor so he had to spend like five seconds freeing them SO THAT HE HAD TO LISTEN TO SOMEONE SAYING MAYBE TRY A SOLUTION THAT DOESN’T INVOLVE FIRE. Think harder, Arthas.
Mind you, I’m not condoning what Arthas or Daelin did. But I do think having that kind of villain on the Alliance side would do a lot more to actually make it seem logical if they’re portrayed as the aggressors. Because that fits.
There are two things to that effect… First, I do not think Arthas was inherently evil originally. He is a very “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” kind of character. So I think the implication of that is to say either the effects of becoming undead twists ones sense of morality (Aka, seeing the value in what most see as a horrific curse. And Also the benefits of cultural homogenization in a purely civical sense). OR it implies that Arthas’ was essentially mind controlled, or charmed by the Lich King. However, I think the former is more true, as it’s -technically- true. A world dominated by the Scourge would be a world without war, hunger or poverty… Besides a hunger for brains, of course.
But one has to remember that everyone is a hero in their own mind. I feel like anyone advocating for utopia is someone anyone should be weary of. It is a fine line between “This is what everyone should have.” vs “This is what you will have if you want it or not.”
Even though Sylvanas has been butchered by the current narrative, this is one way I hope they “redeem” her. Not by giving her literal redemption - she’s done far too much evil for that - but by showing us how she got there. Because they’ve implied that she actually sees herself as an altruist, who is trying to do everyone a favour by killing them.
Exactly like this. That still makes what she’s done horrible, but at least kind of interesting horrible.
Edit: In her own mind, I think Sylvanas is still the same woman who threw herself in front of Arthas to save a child. She’s just doing it for the whole world now. And instead of saving everyone, she’s killing them. Because she’s hideously damaged.
Wow, I have a totally different interpretation. Isn’t Blizzard suggesting that any ideology, no matter how well-intended, is dangerous if taken to its extreme? That’s a theme they keep coming back to (c.f. Sargeras, Xe’ra, Yrel, etc.).
I feel like Daelin is being done dirty here. Context and character experiences matter and him acting any other way than he did would have been bad writing honestly.
I agree with you. But he was still wrong. Had he listened to his daughter, Azeroth would be a completely different place. He was written to be wrong, so conflict could happen.
I’m not blaming him. He’s not real. I’m just saying that, in the context of the story, he was wrong.
I like Sam and respect her opinion, but I can’t be arsed to join the discord and it’s not like we haven’t heard each other’s opinions about Maive. Let’s just agree to disagree. Different people like different things, and that’s fine.
I mean, my favourite minor character is Cro Threadstrong, and he’s about as one-dimensional as they come.
Okay, in further defense of Garrosh… I think, from his perspective, both the leaders of the trolls and tauren turned on him for no reason, and Sylvanas is Sylvanas. So, that’s three out of five of the Horde leaders going against him in the first year. That might have had something to do with it.
He knew he wasn’t a good fit for the Warchief position, just like everyone else knew it. But Thrall was so confident he dumped all that responsibility on him at once. I’m still salty at Blizzard for their line about him from the mag’har scenario. How we just got the worst Garrosh from all timelines.
I mean I’d prolly disagree with that too, as I don’t really think every ideology or what we are calling ideology can be equalized in such a way. Only judging things in terms of “moderation” or “extreme” isn’t my thing, and mind you this is the same game that paints indigenous resistance to colonization as monstrous. So it’s not a far fetched interpretation to me that they’re smearing ideas of equality and justice.
I just don’t see that. The heroes of the game are all stereotypically just and egalitarian. Arthas falls into villainy because he is incapable of moderation. It like he heard the old saying that all are equal…in death, agreed, and set out to make it happen.
Or take Sylvanas. Her current position seems to be that, since hope caused her pain, the answer is to kill all hope for everyone and therefore spare their suffering.
This is not Blizzard indicting the idea of hope. This is Blizzard showing that Sylvanas is crazy and has lost all sense of proportion.
Suggesting that an ideology is problematic if taken too far is not the same as saying that the ideology is without merit. For example, I happen to think Canada’s universal health care policy is a good thing, and I also think that too much socialism is a bad thing. I think that capitalism offers some advantages, but also that it should not be completely unregulated.
It’s okay to be nuanced. The world is not black and white, and history’s worst villains are those who thought that it is. WoW’s villains, too.
Edit: the trait shared by almost every villain in WoW is pride, specifically the inability to countenance the idea that they could be wrong. Milton had it right when he identified what made a great villain. In Paradise Lost, Satan’s great strength is also his great weakness: “a mind not to be changed by time or place.”
I’d say more often than not in reality the heroes are simply those who promote the status quo of Azeroths current political order, and this is framed as being what is just. Class relations are next to never discussed, and when they are, those whom are championing the causes of the oppressed and exploited are made villainous and barbaric, as they are in dark age chronicles. In this universe egalitarianism is egalitarianism only among kings and their ilk, and only the kings willing to abide the current political order at that.
This is getting into a whole heap of worms that I probably can’t properly respond to on this forum without getting too off topic so I’ll just have to say I probably disagree with all of this in one way or another, such as definitions of socialism, capitalism, what is meant by black and white and whether we can frame any events in history in those terms, etc.