Retcon, Venthyr Campaign, the Writing Team emasculating heroes, and Kael'thas

Community General Discussion
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SPOILER WARNING for those who haven’t seen through the Venthyr campaign or end game yet…

I really, truly love this game, but I am about to cut myself over the sloppy writing. Example? We spend an entire Venthyr chapter identifying that greed is not one of Kael’s sins, then we read his sin stone and it says greed is one of his sins. …Christie Golden are you behind this?

I’m really losing sleep over how Kael’thas was retconned from a shy, humble, benevolent prince to a mustachioed tyrant the moment he touched Outland, and now they’ve retconned him again as a petulant snob and spoiled brat in SL. For those that don’t know the history, Kael’thas is a hero. He was studying in Dalaran when Arthas killed his father. He is a shy, benevolent, caring prince. He raced home and blew up the Sunwell to stop the scourge from pouring through, saving the Eastern Kingdoms but sentencing his own people to mana starvation. Boats of fleeing belf children were sunk and 90% of his people were slaughtered. He moved to strike back at the scourge with his last handful of fighters and Garithos, the epic racist who hates all who are non-human, sent him alone to face impending doom knowing he would be overwhelmed and perish.

The Naga Vashj shows up and offers aide and together, Vashj and Kael’thas forces are successful against the scourge. Garithos is displeased by this and now has the excuse he’s needed to eradicate Kael. He deems Kael a traitor for working with the Naga, of course he despises the Naga also, and uses this a justification to throw Kael and his men in prison to rot for the next thousand or so years, or however long belfs live. Luckily Vashj breaks Kael out of jail, but at this point his people are dying without their sunwell. He writes of his hesitation to make a pact with Illidan to save his people, considering it a necessary evil, but then he and his people are considered traitors for having anything to do with Illidan and Vashj, after Garithos tried to exterminate them, and that’s how high elves became a Horde race.

Then we got the Retcon. The moment Kael sets a toe in Outland he is suddenly a mustachioed villian who turns on his people and is fully corrupted. Even though we have Void elves and Illidari demon hunters who are totally okay with demonic energy now, even though we have Illidan who is a legend now, even though Illidan had a castle of slaves and concubines and we sat through a whole expansion getting lectured by holy characters for going after Illidan with hate in our hearts, Illidan who blows up a Naaru and even the high prophet himself doesn’t blink an eye… Thats all fine, but Kael? Nope, he has to go to hell and get spanked and emasculated for who knows how many eons. He doesn’t even get to see Vashj. Mind you she doesn’t get spanked for eons, she goes straight to Maldraxxus to have some fun. We even have Sylvanas now saying no one had freedom or a choice in life so why is Kael being the only one punished for what he couldn’t control??? This writing is awful.

Blood elves without their sunwell are wretched. Nightborne without their nightwell are withered. There was even a Nightborne boss we had to fight in a raid who thought she had to side with the legion to save her people, sound familiar? Rinse and repeat. Don’t get me wrong, I love the universe, but the writing team needs to consist of people who care about the warcraft universe and its characters and who have the talent and creativity to handle it.

The Retcon of Kael’thas the moment he touched Outland was sloppy, he was used as a prop to make a quick dramatic story. If you get the Artifact weapon, Felo’melorn, you get to read 1 page about how Kael reforged it (his father’s sword) and how he fought Arthas with it over and over and over, countless times, and neither could best the other, but in the entire wrath of the lich king we don’t get a glimpse of that, only that Sylvanas is the brave hero that dare go after Arthas. At least the teams at Blizzard cared enough to bring him back in the blood elf heritage armor quest to give you a glimpse of who he really was. And I’m thankful they tried to incorporate him into the new story in Shadowlands, but all they’ve done is deny his justice and torment him for the retconning while everyone else is skipping around like its a Disney story.

I’m afraid at this point the next thing we will see is that Sylvanas is a hero who just had to kill her own to give us freedom from fate and everyone will be happy and good is evil and evil is good, but still fcvk Kael right? He alone will still magically just have to pay for crap he had no choice in and awful writing with no resolution, no justice, nothing. They couldnt even let him play a hand in taking out Kel’Thuzad. He doesn’t even get to launch a single fireball at that lich, who we’ve killed what 4 times? He just has to forgo everything and sit there and be sorry. Tyrande pops up out of nowhere and is totes fine. Ysera gets a whole redemption story but Kael is spanked like a petulant child, an uttery mockery of who he is before the retcon. I am sticking with my head cannon that he made a humunculous of himself and actually peaced out from WoW years ago and went on to Dota2 as the Invoker (who is based off Carl / Kael) to do something more sensible with his eons of knowledge and time. I love WoW and will probably always play it, but I will never stop calling out this horsecrap.

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Completely agree they did kael dirty on BC and continue to screw him. His entire story in BC was completely out of character for him.

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In which part of the campaign is this? Is it some minigame quest or something?

I’ve done the first 6 chapters (up to present) of the Venthyr campaign and haven’t seen Kaelthas.

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I might be wrong, but wasn’t part of Denathrius’ experiments with Kael’thas writing sins on his Sinstones that he himself was not actually guilty of, while pumping him full of sin anima? Might be an explanation.

This is incorrect. Blood/High Elves become Wretched by consuming too much mana.

I agree completely. The Kael’thas we knew at the end of WC3:TFT and the Kael’thas we saw in WoW are two completely different characters.

Nothing short of a reboot will fix things now.

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We will see Arthas again this expac, he will either get a redemption or another “men are super weak and insecure” moment before his final death. Illidan will surf in as well on the back of sargeras in the final patch to steal the killing blow on whoever we are fighting.

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Uhhhh, did you play Warcraft III at all?

Kael isn’t the lunatic that they turned him into in BC for the sake of having a raid boss, but he’s not someone I would have ever described as “shy” or “humble” either.

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A blood elf prince, shy and humble?

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Hrmm don’t worry it gets better for him but I won’t say anymore. You’ll find out :wink:

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We already have, kind of. According the the Kyrian campaign, after we killed Arthas Uther grabbed his soul and dropped it directly into the Maw, bypassing the Arbiter (thus proving the point about Kyrians needing to forget the past so as to not be biased.)

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With the opinions expressed by some of the current staff writers I would bet on nothing that makes a male character look competent or redeemable, but I am open to being proven wrong.

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I don’t think you fully understand the story.

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TLDR sorry

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I think you need a break then.

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uhhhh, he was never shy or humble. Benevolent is questionable. he only cared about his people and if he had to throw away other races for that, he would.

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This.
10characters.

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Agreed. I’m female by the way. I state my gender to emphasize the point that I don’t think most of us “girl gamers” are even asking for this emasculation and demonizing of male heroes. I can’t stand it, personally. I’m cool with some strong women, for ex: it makes sense thrall’s mom is a tough female, but yeah. I have noticed a trend in the game lately. I’ve played all the warcraft games, all the WoW expansions, and read every book that’s been published. Christie Golden for one appears to be the name behind a lot of the retconning, in her recent lore book she mentioned belfs being addicted to fel, which they weren’t. They were taught to drain mana from creatures. They used fel crystals to power their city, but most were horrified about Kael siding with Illidan. (Even though of course they are now fine with the illidari… the writing kills me). I noticed too how Thrall takes an imbecillic back seat to Jaina, Bolvar is a terrified mess. The arbiter, the winter queen, the accuser… all insufferable cold strong females like they were made from the same cookie cutter.

Its to the point that so many of the men are just puppets and the writers don’t know how to write for them anymore, that one cannot mistake the trend. Kael was a shy, paranoid dork studying in Dalaran who had no interest in learning to rule. He had to come out after his father died, and they have retconned him twice since. First to tyrant, then to pompous prick who needs to learn a lesson at the hands of the strong female accuser. (Voiced by the same who did last vashj voice) He isn’t even “allowed” to launch a fireball at KelThuzad, as if losing 90% of his people isn’t enough. The men are ineffective pawns on the board and it makes the story soul crushing.

For those who disagree pre WoW was shy, try looking up the play through of the pre-remake Warcraft III. Kael is shy and soft spoken. The remake of Warcraft III that Blizz now sells has changed Kael’s body to that of a giant manly Fabio and given him a smug voice, it wasn’t like that, so …heck… 3rd retconning here I guess.

Agree 100% with Solarion’s post, but I think sincerely here that Blood Elves become wretched because of withdrawal not because of having too much mana. This is what Blizzard has up in their summary of the BC expansion.

“With the fount corrupted and unusable, it became clear that the high elves had become addicted to the Sunwell’s arcane energies. Now that the source of their magic was gone, the few remaining high elves quickly grew ill and apathetic.” <— so they were addicted, but they were only getting ill because the well was corrupted, gone and unusable (which was why Kael’thas went searching for a cure), so it was the withdrawal that was killing them and making them wretched.