Nathanos’ personality is fine, honestly. I actually would have been fine with him if he wasn’t a waste of the narrative this expansion.
“Hey guys, we’re going to have Sylvanas - who has hogged all of the spotlight of her race like a black hole - abandon her own faction, we should probably introduce someone to take her place.”
That could have been Nathanos.
Nathanos used up nearly all of the Horde’s spotlight - a great narrative choice if he was going to rise to prominence and lead the Forsaken. But he didn’t.
Like a lot of BfA’s narrative, Nathanos was a waste of time, and he took up space that should have been used by other characters.
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As people always say when a certain other writer is brought up, a single person doesn’t create the story. The writers just write what they’re told–right?
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Hell, the writers aren’t even told everything. See Golden writing Sylvanas’ internal monologues in Before the Storm and probably hadn’t been told yet about the Jailer at the time.
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This times 100. Nathanos could have been a great replacement for Sylvanas as the racial leader for the Forsaken, because he fits the theme since he was one of the original Forsaken risen by Arthas, and he actually looks like one of the Forsaken (Or did prior to his Legion model update because of the Dark Mirror story, which was cool).
However, they ruined his character with the Dark Mirror story, which was written by Steve Danuser, because they made him Sylvanas’ lover that she had when she was alive and still loves in undeath. It’s just… bad. I say this because Danuser wrote the Dark Mirror story, and BASED Nathanos’ appearance on himself! It’s creepy.
So now he is just Sylvanas’ bootlicker because he loves her, all because Danuser has some sick fetish for Syvlanas, and now Nathanos has to sink with the Sylvanas ship. If he doesn’t it will be utter crap writing.
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There’s also a certain neckbeard lead narrative designer in love with sylvanas who revived him.
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Oh yea it’s totally the whole writing team that hates Night Elves, that’s for sure, but:
The thing with Nathanos is that he’ written from a very biased PoV. He’s generally very disliked but he was on par with the Night Warrior in 8.1 which made the whole story lose a lot of credibility. If the story was written from a neutral PoV without preferences, the night elves would’ve atleast been allowed to take down 1 horde character there
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Depends how they have it structured. Usually they have like a head writer who makes most of the decisions, and the others write based on their outline. I’m thinking that’s the person with the NE problem. Or someone else higher up. I can’t imagine that every single person on the team would be in on this. It’s far too distasteful in tone (at one point they had WWII-esque death camps for NEs in the 8.1 patch) and in quality (whole tree burning was chintzy GoT Season 8 level shock value).
Assuming they haven’t created an echo chamber of NE hating yes-men, of course…
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I guess it’s subjective and there’s no way to really be sure but, at least to me, Sylvanas’s BfA portrayal doesn’t seem like a by-product of love for her as a character. The prelude to BfA involves her ordering the mass murder of civilians, including children and babies. Based on her presentation, it seems more like the intent was for her to not be remotely likable. Most of her appearances in BfA just served to drive in that she has no positive aspects or depth to her character, and that any instances in the past in which it might have seemed otherwise were just pretenses to manipulate people. I think Sylvanas would have been shown as at least somewhat sympathetic and compelling if someone on the writing team was a huge fan of her. But I also don’t really know how their process works so maybe he was just overruled by the rest of the writing team.
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Im kinda glad they dont show her as sympathetic or relatable when shes burning down teldrassil. there is no relatability in there. Blizzard tried and failed at doing this same thing when Garrosh exploded Theramore to kick off MoP. what was supposed to be a heinous and horrible act was taken as an end to a threat to the Horde.
When The Horde Players didnt get the hint, they had to make Garrosh capture the Theramore Civilians aswell by the time SoO kicks off. Here there intent is made clear for all to see. Zero room for glorifying Mass Murder in the name of Terrorism
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They still have those death camps they just aren’t called death camps anymore
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My point was more that, as a result burning down Teldrassil, she can’t be sympathetic or relatable. And if they wanted her to be a sympathetic character, they wouldn’t have had her do that at all.
And I don’t buy for a second that the Theramore civilians were added to change the perspectives of Horde players. That wouldn’t do anything to shift the opinions of people who had no issues with what he had been doing throughout MoP.
Edit: By no means was I saying she should have been portrayed as sympathetic after committing mass murder. I have no idea what about my post makes it seem otherwise. The point is that mass murderer =/= sympathetic
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my point was that this is them trying to redo MoP and do it how they percieve it to be the right and better version of it. Garrosh was never going to be a sympathetic character. despite how much golden and alex tried.
the only thing im actually upset about is them lying about it. everyone who wasnt extremely loyal to sylvanas knew it would be her burning the tree but they tried to take us for a ride and ended up just cutting deeper
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Golden literally based him off Hitler for her Tides of War and War Crimes novels.
He was sympathetic prior to Theramore though.
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Unless what they love about her is her being a villain.
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I think there’s a difference between loving writing a character and loving a character though. Maybe they have fun writing a character that roasts babies but I don’t believe they actually like her.
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This whole expac has me feeling all sorts of disgusted. this isnt War, its murder. i dont want to be a part of this sick twisted story.
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I think there’s a bigger difference in liking a character and liking a person.
See how we have posters that like Nathanos as a character because of the context of all other characters giving praise to their characters - however, if they were treated this way by someone in real life they would probably find it unenjoyable, at least based on their reactions to hostile posts directed at them.
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Same. Tyrande summed up how I feel about BfA in the prepatch
“This entire war is without honor. How dare you spill so much innocent blood… for nothing!”
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They treat these real moral problems like cheap toys in order to make themselves come off as deep and introspective when really the only thing theyre doing is disrespecting real tragedy in the hopes that well be entertained.
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At least blizzard doesn’t cheer at the burning like some players in the forums