His horse was getting old. He pushed it anyway.
In bad weather.
Arthas didn’t murder his horse when he ran it through with his sword; he murdered his horse with his reckless and selfish behavior that shattered its legs.
Because he was a spoiled joyriding self-centered punk.
Arthas, Sylvanas, and Kil’Jaeden were all forgiven.
You also have to remember: We, the player characters, have committed more genocide and war crimes than everyone we said was evil and must be stopped combined.
Very true. I should have thought of it from that angle because you’re absolutely right.
Yeah I guess but I’m siding with people that said Arthas was rotten to the core before he picked up the sword. That’s what it looked like to me. I’ve never been a fan of doing a bad thing for a good reason because then your deed is tainted.
And people talk about what a cool character he was.
And I’m just like… girl, I can’t even…
Op, He was at the beginning manipulated in the end that was truly what he became. No one can change a person but that person, that is what he wished to be.
I think he’s pretty ok as a villain but I don’t want him redeemed.
I don’t think anyone takes the novels seriously. Virtually any discussion about WoW character development is going to stick to the development within the game medium. I think that tends to be the fate with most franchises, that people only really care about character development tied into the source medium.
There’s an exception when a franchise is fully in the hands of a single creator, whose putting out the content in various mediums. But when a corporation is farming out material to a host of different contract-writers, tie-in novels are routinely discounted as close to meaningless.
In the game medium, Arthas was Doctor Claw.
“I’ll get you next time, Gadget!”
People laughed about it and mocked the cartoon villain on the forums, at the time. I guess a lot of people were too young back then to remember.
Didn’t that start after the events of Wrathgate were discovered?
Nah, the “narrow escapes” we had while questing had it, with Arthas shaking his fist and promising he’d get us “next time”.
The stuff in Utgarde Pinnacle for instance when we enter the shadow realm.
ROFL I remember that. He would just randomly show up and tell other people to get me and I’m like… come at me, bro. I’m right here.
Couldn’t agree more my guy.
It’s clear that this new development team simply doesn’t care about lore anymore.
And that’s really too bad.
We weren’t worth his time. At no point did he care because he knew he was just going to own us all anyway.
And he did, until a literal miracle stopped him from turning us into scourge.
Arthas has to deal up and offer a new skin color or hair doo.
Its what murder hobos crave.
Folks are also forgetting-
Draenei as a race, are pretty much ABOUT forgiveness.
Kil’jaeden even says he didn’t believe Sargeras could be stopped, and that he hopes he is wrong.
And Velen STILL gives him the Touch of the Naaru before they peace out and the Legion ship explodes.
I’m betting most of y’all didn’t even play in TBC.
The starting Draenei areas are about how the Blood Elves basically forced them to crash the Exodar, and you’re picking up the pieces.
At the end of TBC, Velen forgives the Blood Elves for what they did (following orders under Kael’thas, and capturing M’uru to become paladins) and even purifies the Sunwell by the end of TBC.
He believes it to be destiny anyway, since the Blood Elves helped get the Draenei to Azeroth in the first place when they attacked Exodar/Tempest Keep.
Blood Elves and Draenei are basically friends at that point, after TBC ends. At least Velen and Blood Elven leadership and Lady Liadrin are.
TLDR - If you’ve got a problem with this one, there’s a load of other lore that’s way worse lol. Like Shadowlands, we’ve had two Gul’dans die in our universe, so where are the two Gul’dan souls???
In CoS some of his dialogue actually says, “Oh no. It’s too late. These people have all been infected. They may look fine now, but it’s a matter of time before they turn into the undead.”
Those folks were all walking time bombs filled with the plague. All Arthas was doing was trying to prevent it from being spread further.
Our player characters end up doing a quest in Icecrown, that is the exact same thing that Arthas did. We put people “out of their misery” before they can turn into ghouls from the plague they are infected with.
That is exactly what Arthas did. And yet silly people who have no idea keep crying about Arthas and Stratholme. 
We weren’t worth his time but he kept chasing us around Northrend? That’s contradictory.
Or maybe Arthas was just a sicko who held a 15-year grudge because some kid in Stratholme farted at his birthday party, years before, and was happy to finally get his revenge.
I’d say both explanations are equally likely.
Question is, why was there no Arthas story in Shadowlands? The way he was promoted prior to the SL release it appeared he would play a major part in the story. He didn’t.
I believe what happened was that Arthas was killed by social media. I believe that CCs like Preach, Bueller and Asmongold realized they could make a lot more money by switching from helpful videos to anti WOW videos which allowed them to farm clicks from angry players and become mega CCs.
I believe that the negative advertising from these powerfull CCs was so powerful that it convinced Bilzzard to cut SL short and I believe what got cut was the Arthas storyline.
Now can I prove that? No. But something caused them to change course and downplay Arthas after promoting him just prior to release and my suggestion fits what actually happened.
If there is another suggestion on why they promoted Arthas so much at the start then allowed him to literally fizzle into nothing in one scene, I’d be interesting to hear it.