Prior to him becoming the Lich King, was Arthas actually undead? During the whole Warcraft 3 Undead campaign I never really thought Arthas was actually undead?
At the end of the Human Campaign you see him run off into the snowy landscape with frosrmourne. But he never actually died, right?
I don’t read the books so if there is something mentioned there I might have missed it. I know in WoTLK, it’s revealed at one point he removes his own heart. So at some point he does become undead. I am just not sure if it’s before or after he becomes the Lich King?
While Alex Afrasiabi did state that the Matthias Lehner questline involved Arthas removing his heart because the “incessant drumming” of living hearts disgusted him, Arthas was described as undead in the Rise of the Lich King novel and even described him as having felt the Lich King’s power pierce his heart, stop his breath, and freeze his veins when he donned the Helm of Domination, further established his state of undeath.
Chronicle Volume 3, also described him as undead.
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So are you saying he was undead once he put on the helm of domination? Or he was considered undead prior as well?
He was considered undead prior, him claiming the Helm of Domination was more of the clincher and a point against Afrasiabi’s claims of him seemingly being alive until he removed his heart.
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he became undead after wandering into the icy wastes, he certainly was during the scourging of lordaeron
Frostmourne killed him.
He was just reanimated as he died.
Once he picked up frostmoune, he started his journey. When he went full death knight, he was undead.
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Not right away but it did drain him to the point of undeath and becoming a death knight.
Kinda like the One ring, kinda.
I have to admit, this long confused me. Especially back in the day, as a humble RTS player who didn’t even know about fan websites.
“Wait… in the Human Campaign he never dies…. But in the Undead Campaign… he is a death knight? Ok… but death coil only heals undead… so he died somewhere? Huh?”
Or maybe more like the 9 rings of the ring wraiths.
faster, though.
like a hell of a lot faster.
the ring wraiths took lifetimes to become ringwraiths.
I mean given how much they were kind of aping sauron and the ring wraiths aesthetic i would not be surprised if that was just what DK’s were meant to be
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That is a gameplay thing more then a lore thing. For example, all cult of the damn members are coded as undead but in WoW itself you can see they are coded humanoid as oppose to undead.
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I always laughed at how meat wagons took damage from the ‘anti-undead’ spell during the penultimate RoC undead mission. Obviously it was for gameplay purposes but it was still funny how these mechanical siege weapons were coded as ‘undead’ w.r.t that aura only.
Now if that damage happened if the wagons had corpses in them, sure.
I just assumed its because these meat wagons are animated by undead magic. Hence why they dont have riders. But yeah that was always a gameplay thing.
None of the siege weapons other than the Human ones have riders / pilots iirc. The two human ones are Mortar Teams (Dwarfs) or the siege engine, which you would assume has personal inside of it.
Maybe one can assume the same thing about the meat wagon, that there is an undead in that coffin thing at the top piloting it. 
They were aping dnd death knights.
which, yes, aped ringwraiths.
but they’re almost 1:1 dnd dks.
right down to the runeblades.
Arthas was undead purely for game mechanics, just like the acolytes and necromancers. Lorewise he and all of the death knights were very much alive, but twisted and corrupted by their runeblades.
Aye, like how warlocks void walkers are coded as demons in the game but in lore they’re void creatures instead of demons,
No, lore wise they were undead. Even back then to the Arthas novel. They were 100% undead
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