I think I know part of the reason that Nathanos is a colossal jerk. Given our characters’ interactions with him, there’s different reasons depending on whether they’re Alliance or Horde;
Nathanos sees Alliance PCs as his archnemeses. The Alliance PC is often involved in disrupting Nathanos’ plans, killing his subordinates or thwarting his latest attempt to please Sylvanas. Alliance PCs have even fought him on a couple of occasions, escaped and lived to tell about it (which must stick in his craw).
Nathanos envies Horde PCs. The Horde player characters have done more for the Horde than he ever has, and have influence among all levels of the Horde and are potentially more famed and esteemed. He seemed particularly bitter when the Horde PC is appointed “Speaker of the Horde” for the Zandalari. Probably doubly so if Sylvanas expresses positive sentiment towards Horde PCs
For me, while it doesn’t make him any less insufferable, it does help to understand him.
My perspective on characters like Nathanos is relatively simple.
If all of the characters are just nice and friendly, then I don’t find it to be an interesting story at all.
If I wanted to experience a bunch of friendly friends uniting against evil with the power of friendship, I’d watch something like Captain Planet.
Which is fine, nothing wrong with Captain Planet - but WoW is a fantasy world and I want a bit more depth when it comes to immersing myself in a fantasy world.
Which means a variety of characters and personality types. That’s what a world and story with depth contains.
Some people are good.
Some people are bad.
Some people are empathetic.
Some people are jerks.
Does that mean I think characters like Nathanos are good people? No.
But without them we get a story that I’d consider to be more bland overall.
It is probably fun to write for him, especially if the writers get to express a little disdain they may have towards the Players.
Lorthemar says he was always an insufferable PITA, after we bring him the news of his demise. Blizzard seemed to be using Lorthemar like a mallet to make story points. So either it is just his opinion, or Blizz is trying to say he was the same way in life.
In life, Nathanos was mistreated and scorned for being a Human among Elves, but he was the bully? It may be canon? Or just a perspective? Maybe it is Lorthemar trying to rewrite history, because the Elves were really the bullies, but few are around to remember how racist they used to be?
A lot of Lorthemar’s lines in BfA and early Shadowlands were pretty wretched. But that is another issue. My point is, Nathanos may have been the same grumpy gus in life.
I remember in BfA, when I spoke with Garona, and she says : “get bent.” I laughed and thought it was great. She is a mean woman. She doesn’t want to be there. It is totally in character.
But people were actually complaining about it. Saying it was “too mean”. I remember reading serious posts about removing it, and that was before the whole lawsuit and bowls of fruit.
Some people really hated it, that a Character wasn’t treating them like the messiah… but I was delighted lol. I am a fan of Garona, and I would expect her to have such an attitude.
Couldn’t help quoting that, it is so apt. Especially with ‘Baine is all that is best about the Horde’.
But back to Nathanos. I like to think that Nathanos was a little more noncholant in life. Somewhat gentlemanly, and that while he was a victim of high elf xenophobia, he was quite thick skinned and ambivalent about it. With Sylvanas as a benefactor he was a more than capable of being a willing participant in high elf baiting of his own.
I like him, because he has an amazing sense of humor and doesn’t put up with other people’s crap. Kind of like Cursewords. Is he nice? No. Does that even matter? Also no. I like him.
The source of his attitude is he doesn’t care about anyone else’s opinion of him.
I’d have to disagree on this entire point, Nathanos is noticeably less aggressive to the Horde PC in particular compared to the rest of the Horde. Most of his dialogue treats the PC as the only actually capable soldier in the Horde.
Hells, he gets downright pleasant if you run the loyalty version of the rebellion quests. The guy isn’t shown to be angry that Sylvanas is happy with the PC.
He doesn’t seem a jealous man who detests rivals. He seems to appreciate our successes on behalf of the Banshee Queen, and not scorn them because we might be favored over him for it.
In Seething Shore, he cheers you on if you do stuff.
I remember once, on my Rogue, I sapped an Alliance dog, and took a node right in front of his face. Nathanos actually complimented me. I guess maybe taking a node near an enemy might trigger that dialogue? It was nice to be appreciated on the battlefield, lol.
You know the scene in Adams Family when one of the kids is trying to kill the other kid and he’s like “No, no, no! Gimme that.” And then hands the kid a bigger axe and says “If you are going to do it, do it right. Don’t miss.” That reminds me of Nathanos urging the Horde to kill Alliance.
Comedy gold. It’s that dark comedy that I absolutely love about the Forsaken.
Dark humor is not everyone’s cup of tea. It’s like olive pizza, it’s an aquired taste.
Nathanos is like that because he’s pretty much on his own side, which nominally happens to be Sylvanas’s side, which if you have not noticed has changed allegiances several times. Essentially everyone else is his enemy or a potential enemy depending on who he’s working for that day.
But more than that Nathanos actually has the most logical and straight forward response to the player that is way more believable than the other NPC’s.
Think about it.
What’s more believable?
Horde NPC - “Oh thank goodness, the Alliance champion is here. Now we can huff their rose scented farts and praise their ability to murder our former friends and allies. Thank goodness these small, feeble, pink creatures are here to do what we apparently cannot do - please trample all over our sacred lands and traditions so you can get just a little bit stronger and save us poor savages from ourselves.”
Alliance NPC - “Oh, thank goodness, the Horde Champion is here. Sure they burned down or blew up my home and tried to personally kill me on several occasions, but they’re not like those bad Horde members that I curse under my breath every other word. No, it’s a blessing from the light that these demonically Fel-infused monstrosities and/or ancestor worshipping savages are here to protect our women and children from their former friends and allies. I have every confidence they won’t stab us in the back the first chance they get, let’s help them amass incredibly powerful artifacts and befriend unknowable powerful cosmic entities without any fear of future repercussions.”
I don’t believe this could have been in the case in vanilla. He was hateful to you all throughout his quest chain. Blizzard copied and pasted his insulting dialogue onto a random female Goblin, Gamella Cracklefizz.
I don’t think every npc needs to want to be friends with our PC or worship the ground we walk on… but that doesn’t make the opposite extreme better when it occurs.
After going back and looking over it, you’re both right in BfA. His tone seemed salty to me about us being named “Speaker for the Horde” but maybe that was about something else.
I do think there’d be envy if it was a competition for Sylvanas’ love lol But that’s thankfully not in the game. So I think I might be wrong about Nathanos’ envying Horde PCs, I’ll have to look through other dialogue. I stand by him seeing Alliance PCs as an archnemesis.
You know what, the amount of guys angry at Nathanos from Legion to BFA because he was dating thier Waifu… maybe Thadeus has a reverse point. It was the Horde and Alliance player jealous of him. Not the other way around, he just didn’t care enough to kiss thier toes over it.
A guy in my old guild even went so far as to project his own irl experience where a woman he liked was the guild leader who gave her husband special treatment… ( I told him he should go to therapy…it’s not normal or healthy to dwell on that.)
Reminds me of those accusations of people liking Sylvanas due to being attracted to her. I haven’t heard anyone complaining about Nathanos for that reason (my dislike for him is him being a one-dimensional, plot armored, smug jerk).
I know a lot of people who like Sylvanas based on narrative reasons. But there’s also people who like Sylvanas partly or completely because they find her attractive, it’s not as uncommon as you think it is/would like it to be.
And her being undead doesn’t seem to get in the way of that, they still want their corpse waifu. Given all the things we learned about from the lawsuit; “cubicle crawls”, hidden toilet cams, disturbing stories about disappearing bottles of breast milk (I’m not making that up )… I’m not saying it does, but I am saying I would be horrified but not very surprised if THAT perversion existed in the company too (note how the word for attraction to the dead is banned on these forums).
From what you’re saying, I also hope that guy in your guild got the therapy.
Accolonn in a professional interwiew asked Madeline Roux if Sylvanas smelled nice just so he could justify to his fans why they should continue to be okay with sexualizing her.
Meanwhile my favorite depiction of Sylvanas is the unflattering one in In the Shadows of the Sun where her skin is literally peeling away from her mouth. I wish they did present a more grotesque Sylvanas. Makani and Kotrig (I may have spelt that wrong) seems to get that appeal, one of my favorite art of Makani’s is where she depicts Nathanos in Dark Mirror right after he’s broken free from the Lich King, they are both absolutely ugly and sinister. I love that.
Do you have a link to that interview? imo when fans wonder about how a character smells and it’s not relevant to the story, that indicates obsession.
A more decomposing and scary-looking Sylvanas and Nathanos would fit the atmosphere more… but I could see the marketing team shy away from that because then “hOw CaN (they) cAsh In oN hEr sEx AppEaL?” I have no idea why they bothered to do that have Nathanos’ body get altered to look less decomposed.
Probably because they don’t want to create a custom undead model that needs to be given a custom censoring for the Chinese client.
We have three custom undead and none of them are decomposing, I call shenanigans.
)… I’m not saying it does, but I am saying I would be horrified but not very surprised if THAT perversion existed in the company too (note how the word for attraction to the dead 
is banned on these forums).
I have no idea why they bothered to do that have Nathanos’ body get altered to look less decomposed.