There’s been a slow build to this. Blizzard has kept the Scourge pretty present in the background since Wrath ended. Even if it was minor to say they were out there still. In the Cata you had the battle for Andorhal and then the events in the Plaguelands.
In MoP you had the update to Scholomance. An odd instance to update. In WoD you had the necromancer who annihilated Admiral Taylor’s garrison in Spires of Arak. Legion things REALLY heated up. With the events of the DK class hall, the reformation of the four horsemen, the assault on Light’s Hope, and then the attack on the Ruby Sanctum.
Finally throughout BfA you have everything death related going on. Add in Bolvar’s daughter. I don’t think he’ll be a villain, but he sure would be a VERY questionable ally.
Oh I agree! I think he may well straddle the line where figuring out if he is truly an ally becomes really hard and at different spots in the expansion he may well stray into anti-villain territory.
Smashing the crown and let come what may is a very valid option.
The legion is broken, were dealing with the last full power Old God that isn’t contained, and Deathwing is gone. Now is as good a time as any to finish the job and end the Lich King once and for all.
This is something I have wondered about. The whole purpose of the Lich King is that he controls the undead and keeps them in check in Bolvar’s case. It’s been 6 years since he became the Lich King, in that time couldn’t the Ebon Blade and the Argent Dawn, or just anybody, have just gone and began to kill all the remaining undead?
This would then render the Lich King useless and we would no longer have to worry about him as we could just kill him.
I would not call him weaker, it is more that Bolvar has been trying to force them to do precisely the inverse of what the Nathrezim—who were the architects the scourge plan—designed the helm, and therefore those it commands, to do.
That he has done so without cease for years on end is pretty remarkable feat of willpower in and of itself.
Arthas had little issue ordering them not to swarm everyone it is fighting arthas’s last command of kill everyone that keeps bolvar struggling not the dreadlords.
There is some indicators that he has not been able to fully reign them in. Plus our resources have been directed elsewhere. There really has not been the manpower to destroy the mountains of undead, even if they put up little resistance. The needed manpower has been busy fighting the wars the Horde started, the Legion and the Old Gods.
Honestly I always felt that the revamped Scholomance and Scarlet mono dungeons were set in the Cata timeline. Makes no sense why we would allow Gandling the whole of cata to build up his forces within his school after we made him retreat to said school after the battle of Andorhal. But this is blizzard after all, so who knows.
It’s always possible lacking an intact Frostmourne might also reduce Bolvar’s ability to simply override Arthas’ final psychic commands to the Scourge and subdue them all. Arguably without the runeblade, the Lich King’s “set” of armor forged to contain and focus his power is incomplete. Plus Frostmourne was something of a self-aware “entity” itself, with a built-in intelligence that may have boosted Arthas’ and Ner’zhul’s power over the Scourge when it was still “alive” and intact.
Shattering it (and presumably killing or otherwise dispelling the self-aware “entity” possessing it, since the subsequent Artifact weapons forged from it didn’t seem to whisper to the Deathlord as Frostmourne did to Arthas) may have significantly reduced the range and potency of control that Bolvar could exert over Scourge outside the immediate vicinity of Icecrown.
It might also be a simple numbers thing. It’s worth remembering that ever since Ner’zhul began raising victims as undead the Lich King’s power over them grew with every additional soul the Scourge took into itself, in effect directly making the Scourge’s continued expansion necessary to the Lich King’s ability to maintain control over the ever-growing ranks. When Frostmourne was broken and Arthas slain, a whole bunch of the most powerful souls held captive and boosting the Lich King’s psychic power were set free, while the Scourge still remained widespread and extremely numerous. Bolvar took up the Helm bereft of an entire host of souls previously held captive within the blade, so he may well have just plain started out his tenure as Lich King with a deficit of the captive souls needed to subdue and rein in the entire Scourge at its current size.
Arthas was also directly linked to Ner’zhul via Frostmourne and consumed the former LK’s knowledge.
Bolvar basically had to learn things from scratch. Which is why undead that were far away from Northrend (relatively speaking) managed to remain free during the chaos. Even some more intelligent undead had the delusion that they could become the next Lich King. Basically it was another civil war in the plaguelands that we stopped from actually happening before it could’ve gotten out of control.
There are reasons bolvar is weaker whennit comes to control of the scourge no fristmourbe little time adapting the last command being super powerful that much is true.
He did manage to maintain control on the last 9 prime Val’kyrs though, until they made a bargin with Sylvanas.
So Bolvar wasn’t completely weak. I guess around that time Bolvar was more concerned on keeping the Val’kyr in check, as they can easily raise undead instead of trying to control undead that were miles away from Icecrown.