So, say that as soon as Teld goes up in flames an emp hits a solar flare in the twisting nether or whatever, making Anduin and Valerian swap bodies in some sort of freaky friday type deal.
Assuming no one -not even himself- has plot armor, how does BFA go down?
It also doesn’t help that we as the player from a narrative point of view are shot-gunned down the avenue of a blind faction conflict then suddenly we have to turn around, shake hands and forget we just blasted the other guys limb off.
Makes no sense, everyone looks stupid and even after all this time there is still no straight up answers after why this whole war was started in the first place.
Anduin is all that is best in the Alliance!
indeed.
If it was Varian, or Muradin, or even Genn, that scene would make total sense to me in light of the given universe.
If one of those 3 jumped on a tank and smashed it - that is par for the course in the Warcraft universe.
But Anduin? It felt like a moment that someone thought would be cool but was just lame.
Blizzard seems to miss the point about Anduin. He does not have to be in the front line trading blows with Sylvanas and Saurfang and tanks. If he sat in a church, or wandered around trying to do diplomacy, that would make sense. Why not play up his strengths instead of foisting actions upon him to make him heroic?
I am of the opinion that Anduin is an alright character. He has potential and he has had good moments. He represents naive yet wise youth. That is a fine perspective to include.
But making him Conan the Tanksmasher all of a sudden just fell flat.
I don’t think Anduin is a problem in and of himself. A story about how a genuinely, thoroughly good person with high ideals copes with others who want to use his goodness for their own ends and how he makes choices in situations that have no clear right answer–I think that could be extremely interesting. What frustrates me is that they’re not giving him any kind of real challenge or difficult choice.
The closest thing to it in BfA was that scene where Tyrande decided to go off and do her own thing, and I thought that was one of the better story points in this supposedly character-driven expansion. I would have enjoyed seeing more of that type of thing, but they’re trying to do so much story in this expansion that there just isn’t time to develop threads like that further.
I do wish they’d left him physically weak, though. It would have opened up a lot more story space for other characters to shine in that department and maybe even allowed the return of the “supreme allied commander” position.
What? There’s no reason to think he would have survived if the Horde stayed to get wiped out.
People do make some good points but i still think the source of alot of discontent is due to the Alliance not being aggressive and this is due to Anduin being the leader of it.
The initial draft had the Alliance attacking the horde first by a young Anduin trying to prove himself his fathers successor. Metzen mentioned that he was surprised that teldrassil happen first.
However the writers who took over refused to let Anduin do this instead having it as a reaction to Teldrassil. As others pointed out no one also calls Anduin out on his mistakes or his constant prattling about the good side of the horde.
If the Alliance had started the conflict and been a more aggressive faction I think the conflict would have been far better received. As it stands I dont think the writers will alter course either as they are intending to sink this ship with Anduin at the head of it.
That seems to be how it was sold to the Alliance, at least from Genn’s perspective.
That was supposed to be why he was so eager to engage with the Horde fleet in Stormheim, because he blamed the Horde for Varian ‘having to’ sacrifice himself.
Obviously, logically it doesn’t follow, but I think OP is more saying from an emotional standpoint Anduin should have cause to resent and distrust the Horde.
That is correct, The story and the characters at the broken shore on the Alliance side are supposed to be blaming the Horde for Varians death. Yet Anduin Varians son never ever considers blaming the Horde or Sylvanas Instead he chastises those who do such as Jaina and Genn.
Of course its not true and the Horde has its reasons for retreating and Varian did choose to sacrifice himself but Anduin wouldn’t know that.
There was no realistic response from Varians death from Anduin. No anger, there was a bit of grief however he never brings up his fathers letter where he tells him to fight or the words his father warned the Horde at the Seige of Orgimmar. He just goes on about preaching peace with the Horde.
Honestly, Anduin should have stayed king of SW and thats it. He could have been a good High King in peacetime, but he’s **** at war.
Right off the bat Muradin or Shandris could have been great Supreme Commmanders before all this mess went down. Turalyon is another obvious choice, but only if he updates his knowledge on the current state of Azeroth
It depends on the moment in time.
When Anduin sends Genn and Rogers to investigate Sylvanas’s activities in Stormheim - Anduin has no idea about the truth, and only has the Alliance’s biased and incomplete information.
In BtS, we are told Baine has been sending Anduin letters informing him of the Horde’s perspective. Anduin does not know which is the truth - Baine’s or Genn’s. Then he speaks with Sylvanas, and she tells him Varian would have died no matter what. And even though Anduin mistrusts her - he believes her about that.
So before Stormheim, he does not know. But before the War of Thorns starts, Anduin at least is informed by Baine and Sylvanas personally.
The problem isn’t Anduin, the problem is the Kingdom of Stormwind. Because of the limitation of interesting stories surrounding this kingdom, we come to Anduin. The ideal for the Alliance was for Anduin to be a pacifist but at the same time to display traces of religious intolerance. That is, that he really was a kind of light militant, similar to what Yrel is.
Then the problems arise, because Stormwind is a kingdom without identity, it would be bad for Blizzard to simply repeat Arthas’s recipe and turn Anduin into a paladin, so they create this abomination, which is a priest with all the traits of a paladin, but still a priest. After all, his armor is more paladin than any armor I’ve ever seen.
In addition, because Stormwind City is a kingdom without any charisma, for human history to thrive the rest of the Alliance races must be cannibalized, so you create unavoidable problems for the narrative. Remember that only 100 quests from Gilneas were able to make this realm much more interesting to the fanbase than 15 years of Stormwind.
The same is true of the Kaldoreis, in order to highlight humans and their kingdom more boring than butter with ice, the whole fantastic lore Kaldorei had to be eviscerated in order for humans to be characterized as the supreme kingdom. It’s all about Stormwind, and Anduin is just the last stage of this horrible lore of this absolutely terrible Kingdom.
He immediately steps down for a more qualified person to be High King. Valerian has no presumptions of his qualifications.
Barring that, there is no “siege” of Undercity. He levels it with artillery and bombs. Soldiers wear gas masks while they sweep the remains for proof of Sylvie’s demise.
Valerian encourages the night elf guerilla campaign with troops, trainers, and supplies. False flag operations are the norm, training and exploiting other races hateed of the Horde to cause trouble with the Horde war effort. Assassination and misinformation is the norm.
He tries to charm the Zandalari into staying neutral. Taranji is “locked” in a gilded cage, and if a war breaks out, he sinks the navy in port. There’s is no suicide squad, or trying to “persuade” their king. He’d probably try to neutralize both in order to kickstart a civil war.
Nobody calls what Jaina did to Daelin patricide, and Valerian did the exact same thing to Arcturus.
I’ve heard this floated a few times but is there any article or interview that actually confirms that a first draft had the order switched? If Metzen didn’t know anything about the plot of BFA, then his being surprised at Teldrassil happening first doesn’t confirm that anything changed.
But the Horde, specifically via Baine, contested that. And I even thought his magic bones backed it.
Yes he does, he notes at the start of Legion, it wasn’t the time and vengeance must wait. Then actually figured out the situation. Velen agreed with this as well.
For the simple reason that is kinda boring in an MMO setting. More importantly, they did that during the BtS book.
Just because he’s not screaming for blood of the Horde every ten seconds does not make him a "neutral’ character.
Now that he’s grown he’s a valid target for Horde PVP acheivements if I’m not mistaken.
He’s very much Alliance even if he’s not Hero Chin Junior.
I don’t think he’s a Mary Sue because he’s a “good guy” or because he’s a dev/writer favorite. Thrall was also a good guy and a dev/writer favorite, but he also had genuine conflicts to resolve and explore, both within himself and within the Horde. Even the direction his character took in Cata, which seems to be broadly unpopular with fans, revolved around his guilt and indecision about whether he’d done the right thing in leaving the Horde in the hands of Garrosh, given what happened to Cairne and everything after.
Anduin COULD be a good character. He could spend more time exploring the doubt and insecurity he feels trying to live in Varian’s shadow. He could explore how his friendship with Baine divides his loyalties, and how he doesn’t really want to wage war with a Horde that he knows also contains friends and potential future allies, like Baine and Saurfang, even though that means he’s neglecting the needs of his “own people.”
But it really feels like the narrative never allows him to experience these conflicts, except in the vaguest, most off-screen of ways. Every time he shows up, he just… always knows exactly what to say. He’s always just, wise, and peaceful, despite being, what, 21? He never says or does anything that betrays any flaws; his POV is clearly intended to be a statement of the kind of lawful good ideals that the most pure-white vision of the Alliance is meant to represent.
The problem with Anduin isn’t that he’s good, or sympathetic. There are lots of good and sympathetic characters in WoW. The problem is that the narrative never challenges him, except in very overarching, broadly-plot-based ways that are clearly designed only to serve as a token obstacle that he gets to immediately overcome in order to highlight his inherently virtuous nature.
I don’t think there’s anything that spells it out.
There’s some circumstantial evidence that hints that it might be true, though:
Source for that interview:
https://blizzardwatch.com/2018/04/05/wow-developer-qa-travis-day-jimmy-lo/
So there’s no solid proof for the theory, and I don’t know whether I believe in it 100% or not. But it would explain some things.