The really sad part is that it really wouldn’t have taken much to at least make Saurfang not look as equally guilty as Sylvanas. Literally just not having him think up and make the war plans for Darkshore and Darnassus would have made his story a ton better.
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I personally think just not having him play a main role (and actually have him play the core support role for Baine, just as Baine did for Vol’jin) would’ve been better for the story.
Personally, I would actually pay more sub money to stop killing Horde leaders entirely. Sylvanas included.
But that’s just me.
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I don’t disagree, especially given Baine’s role in the story anyway. I suppose my point is just how easily avoidable it was to not make Saurfang have an active hand in the plans for mass killing so that he remains more in character and so when he dies, the great fancy funeral for a dead hero doesn’t ring so damn hollow.
But he was just a needed plot device. Square peg goes into the round hole by shaving off those troublesome, unnecessary parts.
Yes, I really like him. He’s probably one of my favourite current characters, and definitely in a top 10 list of overall favourites in the franchise.
It doesn’t mean I agree with his every move, or like every aspect of his and Sylvanas’ story. But he is, IMO, a compelling and interesting and ultimately tragic character, and that’s the kind of thing I jive with.
Further, he’s a breath of fresh air in a world oversaturated with “idealistic lawful good leader who just wants to do the right thing,” kind of characters. The lore and story need more people like Nathanos, IMO, and break away from this dichotomy of “existential, world-ending villain” or “really nice person in almost every way,” which is, frankly, what a lot of people end up being written as.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the more classically heroic people. I’m the kind of guy who will do like 10 different “good guy” playthroughs and 1 “bad guy” playthrough in RPGs and such. Anduin is probably my #1 favourite if you really made me pick one. Etc, etc, But you gotta admit, Anduin, Thrall, Jaina, Baine, Talanji, Vol’jin, Cairne, Kiro, Lor’themar, Malfurion, etc., etc all kind of start to look like the exact same character if you squint a little.
So, yes, I love Nathanos a lot. He adds a lot to the story and we need more characters like him.
Also he unironically says “zounds.” Like, c’mon.
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I’m actually 100% onboard with you. Horde’s burned through pretty much all their major narrative characters in the past decade.
The Alliance lost Varian and Admiral Taylor, who weren’t even in Vanilla.
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I will say Nathanos’ one redeeming quality is he has a nice coat.
And I do hope we get transmogs like that someday beyond Kul Tiras locked.
Yeah, and I really don’t think the solution is for Alliance to lose some of theirs in turn. I’m really worried about Anduin, Jaina and Baine. 
Not Thrall tho. I’m tired of Thrall.
But if we could give some of our legacy characters a chance to survive through an expansion or two, that’d be neat.
Man I didn’t think there were so many people that liked that jackwagon. Maybe I just was just predisposed to hating him because in vanilla his questline where he called you am imbecile ten thousand times had such good rewards that it was basically mandatory for anyone doing high end content.
First, I think everyone should read this post.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/why-a-forsaken-player-is-frustrated/393567
It’s a fantastic good-faith criticism of the problems with BfA and Before The Storm regarding the Forsaken, and their part about Nathanos is spot on why I don’t like him - he was a waste of the narrative.
Nathanos being a jerk is fine. His actual character itself is fine.
Having to blindly follow quests because he said so dragged on way too long, but that’s not necessarily a fault of his character itself.
But Nathanos was one of the most prominent characters of the Horde story and he built up to nothing.
There was no payoff.
Worse, he leaves a hole in the story, and the only potential characters to fill that hole are pretty bad choices.
Nathanos is not without traits that can make him a good character. He even has quirks that are funny.
For a long time, I held out hope that Nathanos would amount to something in the narrative, but he didn’t. So if he’s not going to amount to anything or mean anything, he should stop being a part of the story and should just be removed from the narrative.
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I don’t think Nathanos and Sylvanas are leaving Shadowlands alive so…idk that I agree that he leaves a hole, because they’re just gonna be dead. We’re gonna end up getting Calia as the faction leader, and maybe the council will come back with her (which I hope they do, because Before the Storm was ruined for me by her in the last ten pages of that book).
I know everyone is convinced that they (the banshee dream team) have plot armor, but Blizzard is also pretty predictable, and Sylvanas’ story has continued to match Garrosh’s in a lot of major ways … save for the bit where she decided Orgrimmar (and … her people … which was definitely a choice Blizzard made) wasn’t worth her time to hold onto when she had the Shadowlands to invade.
Imo, Nathanos building up to nothing (which I am not sure I agree with entirely, but I’ll bite) is just once again par the course for Horde storylines. We spend an entire expansion with a leader just to watch them die. That’s all Nathanos was ever going to do, and that’s probably why Blizzard worked so hard to make us hate him. So that maybe we’d be less annoyed by it this time.
I’m not less annoyed, personally. It’s a very tiresome cycle.
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This is not a good outcome.
She’s a savior character who hasn’t shared any of the experiences of “her people”, not a leader.
The Forsaken deserve to be lead by a Forsaken who has been a Forsaken, not a rogue element who didn’t even formally join the faction until they got rewritten for Legion, or a character who still isn’t even a part of the faction.
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By that note, I’m still upset the Bilgewater are being lead by a Steamwheedle character because Thrall, the character who put Gallywix in charge, said so.
It really says two things:
- Out of Universe, the writers don’t care about the other characters of the faction.
- In Universe, the other characters of this faction have no agency and just do what Thrall tells them to. No one else in the faction has any drive or motivation to rise to power.
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I’m just gonna note that my vote was for Sassy Hardwrench as CEO of the Bilgewater Cartel. She’s worked hard and earned it, I say, and I’m a shareholder! I know that’s not how cartels work but shoosh.
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https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/geniune-question-for-wra-rpers/690140/75
Totally agree with you on this.
I’ll eat a sock if I’m wrong, though.
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Plenty of potential, wasted like many others. Gets a lot of hate I feel but probably because he shoved everyone around the entirety of what was possibly the worst expansion in WoWs history. Overall I mostly just feel apathetic towards Nathanos. Wish I could’ve seen him develop off of Sylvanas’ leash, given a bit of his own agency, some time to shine in his own spotlight.
Also I vote for no single leader of the Forsaken. Bring back the Desolate Council!
He’s a self insert for one of the writers at this point and has been since Legion. Do I need to say anything else?
This one is especially obnoxious to me because the Bilgewater Goblin cast and crew are probably some of the most well fleshed out supporting characters that any faction has, that we saw grow in real time as part of the intro experience.
Nah lets go back to Gazlowe, don’t you remember Gazlowe, from Island Expeditions? Let’s pick Gazlowe.
(I know he has a longer history than Island Expeditions but like most things it is choppily and lazily managed.)
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I dont like Nathanos since he stopped being a minor character and became that annoying edgelord, the Forsaken had good characters to fill that spot…Putress was a good example of a relatively good written character with motivations and goals aside from “following Sylvanas”… any player who followed the goals of the Forsaken since vanilla could see how the Grand Apothecary was the high point of that storyline, the same with Voss with the post Cata vision of the Forsaken and free will.
But i still prefer Nathanos to post BC Thrall.
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It would have been a fine opportunity to build the tension with the new warchief if Saurfang, Baine, or some other oldhead grabbed him by the throat as soon as he started trying to bark orders. He should have just been some groveling sycophant, toiling for good boy points or an occasional pat on the head. A pathetic bootlicker who happened to be deadly in combat and the scalpel of Sylvanas’ army.
He should have been the supporting cast, not the de facto leader of all the Horde’s operations in BfA. He was a bad character because he was written to be a loser but never treated like one.
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