genn greymane and nathanos as a mismatched cop duo will be a major subplot in the streets of gadgetzan expansion
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Out-of-character I think he’s a despicable mustache-twirling villain type that could’ve been done better by maybe berating literally anyone else but the PC? Or at least put in more appropriate situations in relation to his power. (You’re telling me zombie archer man is taking on a god-empowered elf lady? And LIVING?!)
As for in-character, Val has only recently aligned themselves with the Horde, and everything she hears about Nathanos comes to her by way of rumor. Most of what she has heard is… negative, to say the least.
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I was trying to think of another character that is as bloodthirsty as Nathanos, but more likable. Usha Eyegouge came to mind.
“You see the Alliance, you KILL the Alliance!”
I can dig that kinda straight forward thinking, and she doesn’t talk to you like you’re worthless. She saves it for the Alliance. 
There is a long, long list of horrible things I would rather do to myself that rank above listening to Isha talk about her long, long days in Alterac. I’m sure her voice actor is fine most of the time but someone recorded her voice lines and then said “yes these are fine let’s put them in the game.”
Gazlowe is actually a fantastic character, but he works better as Steamwheedle.
The Steamwheedle are not a united people, and different leaders have different ideas as to how they should lean on faction wars.
Gazlowe leans very openly Horde. Revilgaz arguably leans Alliance, but remains friends with Gazlowe. Ricket might be a leader, it’s unclear, she also might lean Horde and seems to get along with Gazlowe. Noggenfogger, the newest leader, explicitly leans a hard neutral, and actually hates Gazlowe because they have delicious personal drama (his wife is Gazlowe’s ex and she’s not entirely over Gazlowe).
Keeping a neutral-but-Horde-leaning faction is good for the narrative, in my opinion, and a fresh relief from the millions of “formerly Alliance but now neutral organizations” that always take center stage for 3rd party threats.
I worry that they’re going to divide the Steamwheedle into true neutrals and Horde leaning characters, then put all the Horde leaning characters into the Horde. Which pretty much destroys the rare political nuance of their situation.
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Probably the same guy who okayed Tyrande’s lines in Legion.
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He was fine in Legion, but eugh, I can’t stand him during BfA content.
About the only world quest I think he’s funny in is the quest where you egg 6 birds and he responds with “YES! NOW OUR ENEMIES WILL KNOW THE MIGHT OF THE HORDE!” (or something along those lines).
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Lets create our own faction alongside Yrel <3
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gonna be honest, i don’t care that nathanos talks down to the player character in a vacuum. on paper that’s not enough for me to dislike a character.
here’s what i do dislike:
- nathanos was the only man among a group of elf women. this always rubbed me the wrong way. if dark rangers were depicted as unisex and multiracial from the beginning, i wouldn’t have immediately hated him, but they weren’t, so it was weird that the “best dark ranger” and the most important one… was a human man… and i didn’t like that :/.
- no one really has interesting interactions with him. there’s no moment where he has a conversation with a character where i think “oh haha you’re such a kidder, nathanos.” he feels like he’s always got the upper hand in the game of verbal parcheesi and there’s never any funny response to his lines that makes him enjoyable.
- he’s totally someone’s self-insert. the fact that he’s never on the back foot, the fact that he’s totally cool and he always knows what to say, the fact that sylvanas returns feelings for him depending on the writer… it all adds up to the fact that this is some guy’s wish fulfillment character and it’s cringe AF.
- yeah it’s petty but why is the lore-important horde leader this expac… a human with glowy eyes?
- also i’m tired of elf woman x human man being the standard interracial couple for important lore characters :/.
if nathanos were a RP character, i’d probably avoid his mun because they’d be some exhausting emotional vampire that just wants to use RP to validate themselves.
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blame the windrunners tbh
it’s a trope for a reason (and can be written well), but i think the big problem with how it’s implemented in wow is that it’s so samey (and it’s not written well). rhonin and nathanos both fit this weird category of kind of strange, mary sue-esque (it’s a loaded term but I can’t think of something that fits better, i apologize) characters who are just bland enough to be a blank slate, are hypercompetent, and almost always succeed.
turalyon/alleria have a much more unique thing going on, at least.
Or any of the windrunner sisters could have not had a relationship. That would’ve been neat too. nathanos could just as easily have been a minion that did not have romantic ties.
Rhonin was the worst since not only was he incredibly bland but that name. Without knowing anything else about him you could tell that he must be a renegade who plays by his own rules, and if he was in a movie he’d be played by Steven Seagal. So I guess ol’ Nate is better than one character.
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the reason is that aragorn and arwen started everyone down this road and everyone thinks they can do aragorn and arwen better. but they can’t. the reason aragorn and arwen works is that the simplicity of LOTR just works in general and retreads of the story do not.
that’s my conspiracy theory at least.
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I would take Nathanos over Rhonin any day of the week.
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arwen and aragorn had an air of tragedy to it: arwen was certain to outlive her husband, and she had to give up so much to be with him, and you felt bad not just for them but for arwen’s father…
Some people are copying the human/elf thing in such shallow ways.
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In regards to the whole human x elf tropes…
come on WoW, you have so many freaking playable races that you’d get cookie points for having a pairing that consists of literally any other two than that. Even that one Goblin x Gnome side bit in BfA is more compelling than the Windrunners.
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there’s also the fact that aragorn is so much more compelling as a character than any of the human men of warcraft.
also what lohkash said. outside of the elf x human, the only multiracial couples with lines (that i can think of) are thalyssra x lor’themar and golden’s goblin x gnome couple that shows up in a few of her books. there might be more but they don’t really come to mind.
even among mortal enemy groups, you get individuals crossing over to be with each other, and it’s kinda skeevy that most multiracial characters in the game that aren’t half-elves, were usually spawned from implied sexual assault or their parents just die! that’s boring!
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I find the Danuser accusations pretty unfair. It’s all a spurious social media-fuled witch-hunt based on a few cherry-picked tweets where Danuser admits… liking the characters he writes. The humanity!
Sure, he posted some fawning tweets about Sylvanas, but he also has about Alleria, Jaina. He’s posted tweets about Anduin being a badass. Etc., etc. In short, he LIKES the characters and lore he gets to work on. Bully for him, and for us.
I do agree Nathanos was a bit too much of a focus in BfA, and suffers from a little overexposure that I think sours a lot of people to the character. It certainly makes the Horde feel “small” to have this guy all over the place doing everything.
As a side note, I don’t think the Dark Rangers were ever explicitly female-only. They were fallen Farstriders who got made into banshees and then got their bodies back, and the Farstriders have never been woman-only. The majority seem to be female, but I think that has a lot to do with the Banshee and Dark Ranger units in WCIII being female. Nathanos was the first Human Farstrider and Ranger Lord, but by no means was he the first male one.
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not explicitly but as a member of the dark ranger RP community, the only visibly male member of the dark rangers WAS nathanos for quite some time. to the point where people would call you out for lore-breaking if you played a male dark ranger. so no, the lore doesn’t explicitly say that dark rangers HAVE to be female (and the retcons to add male dark rangers was necessary), but blizzard did not think to include any male dark ranger models until BFA besides Nathanos. this is an oversight with gross implications.
so you have this group that is referred to as largely female within the canon, and the best of them, the most favored of them, the most important of them, is a man. so uuuuuh i hated him immediately. i’ve hated him much longer than anyone on WrA has, and seeing everyone else hate him come BFA has been just desserts for me.
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Now, granted, I am one of the last people who writes romance (mostly because my method of doing so it to remove having it present any drama deemed needless since there are plenty of ways to draw tension that isn’t angsting), but yeah. Come on Blizzard, give us something unique in a setting that no one would expect until it crops up via lengthy questline.
Have Shirtless Chad Miko romance random a troll or tauren in game, or something like that.
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Confirmed, Shirtless Chad Miko and Random Troll Lohkash officially a canon pairing.
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