I think I know what’s he getting at. if was keep going to the past we are not playing the present.
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For me what makes the writing bad is the horrible retconning of stuff in order to shoe horn new stuff into the lore… See pretty much everything in SL…
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That’s not why he stopped it though; he chose vengence as he had done time and time again - Arthas saw Stratholme as dead all together which we have no idea whether it was or not at that point, not all together
We know that Arthas chose to burn everyone and everything alive for his idea that it would stop the plague from spreading; no convincing Uther, no talking, no explaining, just Arthas’ way … or “damn them all for they are all dead already”
Arthas intent was vengence against whoever led the Scourge which, I don’t remember if he knew about Mal’Ganis at this point or just met him during the burning of Stratholme but regardless - Arthas didn’t act out of “necessity”, because nothing creates the circumstances where innocent lives need to die by the teachings of Uther and the various paladin orders - we’ll see more of Arthas complete lack of care later as well
Then he kills his mercenaries and pins the blame on them so he can go after Mal’Ganis (not the Scourge itself), shows he’s willing to sacrifice everything for the power to kill Mal’Ganis including sacrificing Muradin, and leading up to all of this he wasn’t influenced by Frostmourne but just his own desire for vengence, and it would require wearing the full armour before he merged with Ner’zhul to become the Lich King, so even after having “broken free” of the control … he still sided with Zer’zhul when Icecrown was being weakened by Illidan
Here’s the thing: up until all of this, Arthas was Arthas … he wasn’t under so powerful control yet that he couldn’t disobey, and Ner’zhul was the only one acting to piss off the Burning Crusade simply because they had tortured and put him into the armour for having broken their deals as well as failed
Here’s the conclusion: Arthas Menethil was always driven by vengence and strife as long as we have known him - only when he fully merged and became the Lich King could one even begin to make any of the arguments you are making here, and even then there’s a problem with all of it … Ner’zhul tried to employ the same strategy as both Sylvanas and the Jailor tried to do; “confront the greater enemy by the complete obliteration of life, so one can be unified under a single control in death”
Sylvanas chose this path but did so more for the reason of not wishing to face more betrayal and loneliness, which is why when the Jailor revealed he was the originator behind Arthas idea of “Destroy life to build an army of mindless soldiers able to confront a bigger foe”, she betrayed him, which he responded by reuniting her soul making her have to confront her own actions (which I still don’t know why folks read that as her not being in control; the entire point of all of these storylines is that the characters have been in control this entire time and more importantly WRONG in their actions but that’s for a different time)
The point is this: all three of these characters believed that one could justify whatever amoral actions one made, for their different ideas were part of “the greater good” - Arthas wanted vengence above all and damn anyone who says otherwise; Sylvanas wanted to no longer live her “cursed” life and sought comfort in living an undying life instead of accepting death; and the Jailor believed that free will to die to the foe he had seen was worse than the complete annihlation of all life on Azeroth including the world soul all so one could fight this “greater” enemy
All of 'em believed that amoral actions could be justified, because all of them believed in their own versions of an undiluted version of “the greater good”-mindset
Oh and in terms of the whole “pure soul” thing with Arthas, yah’ no - he was building his army and maintained them on Northrend since Ner’zhul’s vision was to fight the Burning Legion and Arthas had achieved his vengence (in his mind) so the Scourge was held back partially - they still attacked the major cities and settlements via Naxxrammus, never retreated from the Plaguelands, and leading up to the Wrath of the Lich King expansion sent out attacks onto cities in an attempt to coax more champions to Northrend, not caring who got hurt in those attacks
Hardly a “pure soul”-type of a mentality
And drop this frankly moronic idea that the Alliance are somehow someway supposed to be the good guys - they aren’t written or seen like that ever except by forum trolls who need 'em to be that so one can strawman people non-stop
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getting pings that my post was flagged
…thanks guys. Really answered my question
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I guess the GD trolls came out in force to report ya’
At least it should be resolved on Monday … hopefully
Against the Scourge…the plague that was killing his people.
The so called moral good guys also killed to protect. Killed to stop. This is the issue with morals and the excuses that come because you THINK you have the high ground somehow as can be PLAINLY seen with your use of “Arthas intent was vengence” as if “____ intent was justice” makes the ending of a life OK when its the same outcome. The ending of a life.
I also see no examples that I asked for. Where are the examples of the Paladins or any other character with actual moral high ground doing anything to stop those behind the scenes. Everything in the story is them acting out against the just those in front of them and the ONLY time anyone that the story tells us is “good”, are actually doing good deeds…is Tirion placing the crown of the Lich King on top of Bolvar’s head.
WHY DOES TIRION DO THIS? Why is it OK for Bolvar to become the Lich King? The same reason that Arthas does. Go away. You got nothing other than your bias views of the story and not what is actually IN the story. Proof is in your own examples.
You use the story of the Mercs being killed as proof because he wasnt going after the scourge and then say he does it to go after Mal’Ganis…well WHO is Mal’Ganis?
One of the head of the Burning Crusade…Arthas kills his mercs to get Frostmorne to have the power to STOP THE INVASION.
Your bias is funny because it blinded you from the actual story of the game you more than likely have been playing for years…wow. Reminds me those that watched Game of Thrones that were such fanboys they did not see that Daenerys was cold blooded and flipping crazy from season 1.
People cant tell the difference between evil, and good people, with good intentions making what COULD be, bad decisions. Then there is also the FACT the STORY shows that The Lich King speaks through Frostmorne and once Arthas picked it up, the Lich King was in his mind and it was no longer just Arthas and his actions…and once that crown was on, their spirits merged. To place all blame on Arthas shows who is actually evil in their judgement and claims on morality in that jugement is gone.
Great example.
Arthas did nothing wrong
At this point in the story, Mal’Ganis is the Scourge, and in fact the only “leader” figure that Arthas has faced beyond that of Kel’Thuzad
But sure - please tell me of the strategic reason to kill the mercenaries and blame them for burning down the ships and remember once again, at this point there was no Burning Legion that Arthas had any knowledge of
Arthas is looking for vengence and only vengence … nothing else
Medivh, Jaina, Thrall, Baine, Illidan, Tyrande, Malfurion, and more
But if you are looking for the paladins well, they didn’t know who was behind “the curtains” so to speak - they saw a magically altered disease and sought to help people, like those who survived the burning of Stratholme
There you go, the paladins that remained to save those Arthas didn’t manage to kill, and then those paladins who died by Arthas hand because he was instructed to raise Kel’Thuzad and aid the Burning Legion because at that point he knew of them and was in fact serving them - one can debate whether he was controlled or not but everything seems to point towards Arthas not fully being against his servitude to the Dreadlords and the Burning Legion, and first once Kel’Thuzad’s spirit talked to him he was starting to work against them
Because the Scourge remained - they were bound to the “will” of Ner’zhul (now more commonly referred to as the helm of domination and domination magic) but… without anyone to control them, some more clever undead could break free like Sylvanas did … but the thousands upon thousands of mindless undeads would just … walk, towards whatever nearest food source they could find
Tirion was going to put on the helm to prevent this, not to control the undead but to essentially “keep” them near to him - Bolvar intervened as he had been in pain ever since Onyxia’s flames and with his sole experience now being that of an undead that no longer could serve the living the way he wanted to, he volunteered for his “final act of service”
Arthas became the Lich King for vengence - whether you like that or not is completely irrelevant, Bolvar became the Lich King to act as a “Jailor of the Damned”; in other words, he choose to serve and did so until Sylvanas broke the helm
I have no idea where you get your fantastical view of these three characters from; Arthas, Sylvanas, and the Jailor (whom you strangely enough don’t praise like you do the other two, despite all of 'em using the exact same methodology and reasoning), but nothing of what you have said is an honest description of the characters
You can argue it is an interesting philosophical conundrum in hindsight but, in-universe, in-lore, and in-character … nothing of what you have said so far is even remotely found and is just a personal retconning to I dunno, view Arthas as some kind of a hero or something
Quick edit: if you want some help understanding Warcraft’s lore a bit better, remember that players are omniscient beings that know far more than we should, and that whilst Warcraft doesn’t have the world’s best writing … there’s a reason why most of Warcraft’s cast has been referred to, sometimes mockingly so but at least originally intended as fair criticism (good or bad), as “World of Greycraft” in terms of its morality
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Thats not a refute and props up what I said.
The story already did that.
Name a single action they took to uncover who was behind what they were fighting…there was nothing, they only fought what was in front of them. Only Arthas and the Banshee Queen did anything to show us who was behind the scenes and it was through their actions being called evil.
This is why you listed “They sought to help people” as your refute, no details and nothing in detail. They also knew of NO WAY to cure the sourge which means their great moral high ground was “killing bad mkay” and thus doing NOTHING to stop its spread.
You mean the scourge that was killing the world, not being stopped…until Arthas who knew of this took the crown and stopped them.
You clearly have no actual argument and are doing so just because “Arthas bad”.
Quick edit…LOL@ your ending as its clear you are the one that needs help with lore and reading comprehension…also, confirmation bias.
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Objectively speaking? It makes no sense, let’s take the current expansion for example: we are fighting Aspect/Titan Keeper level incarnates… which okay maybe in Cata would’ve been a bad thing like Deathwing who was still an Aspect with all the power that entails or a threat like Ragnaros. However as of Legion and BFA we surpassed Titan Keeper level threats and even ended some Titan level ones thanks to artifacts and the Heart of Azeroth, WHICH, we still possess as of DF and the end of SL.
Danuser has a problem with keeping track of world building details when it comes to writing; threat levels, times and places of established events, canon stated facts, etc… all constantly get contradicted sometimes even just one sentence to the next. He lacks consistency and continuity, which is a hallmark staple of good writing: it’s CONSISTENT.
Basically the impression anybody who sees his work thinks… Danuser is basically M. Night Shamaylan, he tries to add so many expectation defying “twists” to the plot and narrative that it just leaves the entire thing a mess twisted beyond any reasonable recognition.
ONE good twist in a story is good and really all you need, see And then there were None or The Westing Games, both of which have shockingly novel twist endings one does not expect going into the book the first time.
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Well if first need to know what his writing is. And i don’t so i cant pass judgement. But he did say he enjoyed S8 of GoT
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There is a real absence of any characters or plots that challenge the reader to examine interesting or difficult themes or questions, but that is most video game writing so hard to hold against him. I’m going to limit this to a few examples of why the writing is bad in the context of video game writing, to be fair.
The action/plot of the story never allows the characters to do anything compelling or likeable. This results in characters having to tell us over and over how impressive other characters are, because we would never know otherwise.
The dragons are just humans in their characterization, and not even particularly likeable humans. There is never a moment where you would think, “oh, a person would think/act this way but a Dragon is different because of their (insert differentiated experience of being a Dragon).”
Even though they were supposed to be a major story character this expansion I had to google Emberthal’s name to mention how uninteresting they were.
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Some writers also have the idea in their head that what they’re creating is going somehow be revolutionary because they’ve convinced themselves its a good idea.
Which is how we got things like Star Wars The Last Jedi.
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I don’t have a problem with his writing so much as I have a problem with how little importance Blizzard places on it. Story seems to be window dressing for systems, which are still the main focus of the game.
Warlords began with a compelling, if implausible story that was soon subordinated to building garrisons and ships.
BfA started off with some fantastic zone stories, but about halfway through all we were doing was building a necklace and gathering items to make other items that allowed us to do a task that might eventually award other items and make your necklace better.
Shadowlands started interesting zone stories that went nowhere because only the main story got any attention. We were too busy building “legendaries” that were more common than greens.
When story people, who started off playing DnD in their youth were running things, the little stories that you happened upon that gave you that sense of discovery mattered. Now that systems people are in charge, they hardly exist. It’s because those in charge don’t see story as important, because stories don’t matter to endgame play in their minds. Systems are everything.
That is the problem. Not any individual writer.
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Oh I agree completely. I guess you have to think that or you would never allow anyone to see your work lol.
Think about that though. Compelling is subjective while implausible is not thus its concept is flawed.
This only happened because they lost sight of the fact that Hellscream was a great leader for the Horde but tried too hard to tell us he was a bad guy forgetting that the horde are supposed to be the bad guys even though they broke their chains to the fel corruption. They are beasts and will take and do what they need to survive.
Anyway, they flipped Hellscream and decided not to just kill him for his “crimes” and so let him escape because killing bad but were also too out of original ideas and so did what they did because they needed established, beloved characters to prop up their bad story. About the only good thing in that expansion was the garrison idea.
Well it had me toss out my WoW chronical books.
Why punish the books?
Technical issues I see in the writing.
Oversuse of played out plot devices. MY oftne brought up we can’ see dreadlords, several times, in sl. Okay the first one I will grant. by the 3rd and 4th one…no. a 20 to 30 minute scenario made goggles to see these things.
Takes suspension of belief to wth levels.
I don’t count bullets in action movies. I think old boy shot 3 loads off a double barrel. Meh…we can say they ghost loaded it lol. Side note Ghost load for is for pump action, for dramatic impact I can let this slide. For 3 I can do this. If its cool.
Danuser to carry that analogy further has it fire off enough shells you go dude, even a ghost loaded mossberg can’t get this many off no reload.
Recent story has relied on so many things lined up that we’d need degrees in hypermathematics to work out probablilties. Even non-bayesian stats would be going this is outside my pay grade.
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I’ll be honest, I’m still mad about what they did to Vol’Jin. They killed a main character (poorly) for no justifiable reason other than his dream of giving sylvanas the spotlight and writing himself into the story.
We already lost Varian in an awesome heroic send off; it was anticlimactic (to say the least) to watch the newly appointed horde leader just get pissed away like that. You can tell that was not the direction the former story tellers were going.
If you can feel the moment the tone changes, the spotlight changes, the plot changes - it’s not a successful handoff; it’s a failure on the new writer’s ability to pick up where the old story teller left off.
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The story rather explicitly points out that the sole reason to pursue Mal’Ganis into Northrend was for vengence, as there’s nothing there - Northrend is described as a dead rock in the middle of the ocean with the Explorer’s League only recently having sent some exploration parties out there
This entire section here can be summarised with “Medivh”, except for in Illidan’s case because he never cared about the Scourge and only ever focused on The Burning Crusade even to the point where he has been later on, during TBC and afterwards, been criticised as a character who never told people of the full scope and reach of the Burning Legion
But he always worked to counter 'em but did so from a very solitary position and until Legion was described by people around him as having become as bad as Magtheridon himself
I listed this to point out that the paladins were never fighting the Burning Legion nor did Arthas - he fought for vengence, then control, then power, and only when he merged with Ner’zhul was he in a position to even have a chance to comprehend how far reaching the Burning Legion could have been
Haven’t played Warcraft III in a few years and I ain’t gonna play through it again just to get examples from the game to demonstrate how wrong you are, so I am broadly summarising it - but yah’, the paladins helped the people of Lordearon whilst Arthas sailed away for vengence; it is non-specific because it wasn’t ever specified since Arthas came back, commited Regicide, and then proceeded to kill the remaining high ranking paladins - so there’s not much lore in regards to what they actually did besides investigating and trying to figure out what was going on since Arthas never actually explained anything
I already addressed this; Scourge attacks still happened but they were systematic rather than sporadic as they otherwise would’ve been - again, see Naxxramas, the Plaguelands, and the Scourge attacks on major settlements leading up to Wrath of the Lich King
I have categorically disproven all of your stuff but I want to make this clear as the point ran straight over your head and out into space; Arthas ain’t no hero, he very clearly as he himself and others said it many’a’times that he was driven by vengence, but I have never said he was a “good” OR “bad” character
The hilarious part is that again, I even mentioned “World of Greycraft” because how can one call Arthas truly evil if he was manipulated into the worst things he did? He’s still responsible for the things he did whilst under full control of himself, and much like Jaina when he was acting out of rage and extreme personal pain he’s responsible for the slaughters he committed … but he also believed it to have been done for justice at first and later on, as the Lich King, for “The Greater Good” … that’s not an “evil” character, which is why I never said he was
Lookup the difference between a hero (for a couple of missions until he encounters the orcish blademaster), an anti-hero, and a sympathetic villain;
Arthas began as a hero, then becomes an anti-hero, and finally as the Lich King has taken on the role of a sympathetic villain (at least with player’s omniscient knowledge)
Regardless though, just to bring this onto the actual topic because I think this weird … I don’t want to call it a discussion more of a demonstration of how weird the lore is perceived by some, I think this demonstrates the problematic nature of lore in a video game quite well
In order to read up more on this I looked up what Danuser worked on and then wanted to compare it to Metzen’s work and… honestly, even Metzen confirmed that they just wanna run with what they create for the game (WoW) itself because its overall easier to tie into books and more importantly the game itself
I honestly suspect that Danuser’s writing mostly got shafted because of the issues that has occurred within Blizzard’s development team in the past few years, honestly ever since WoD most likely - even if he was the one who created Shadowlands and as far as I can tell Dragonflight, you build on the game itself and try to accomodate the prior lore to the current projects at hand and whilst it ain’t any excuse to do a poor job, you can get shafted by what direction the game itself need the story to go in primarily
So if Metzen had issues back in the day, as he himself says it, and Danuser got the job whilst WoW have had its shakiest bit of concurrent game design issues over the years its probably the primary reason why it ended up looking like this and why the popular take is to blame 'em for just about anything and everything
And on top of that add that folks can have really weird takes on the lore and miss crucial details that change the meaning of a cutscene, interaction, or many other stuff like that
Folks claiming that Sylvanas was “given a free pass” in terms of the cutscene with Uther and her would probably be the biggest example of this that I could give for that
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I suggest you go back up and look at the link I gave in an earlier reply where the video CLEARLY SHOWS RIGHT FROM THE GAME…that it isnt. You are not remembering WC3 correctly. The video uses the part from WC3, right from the game, as one of his talking points.
Do you even understand what you are attempting to refute?!? Arthas knew who was behind the scourge and went after the lich king and when he found out the Burning Legion was behind him, he went after them…he went after the SOURCE and my point is that none of the so called heroes did that, they only fought what was in front them…
And your argument against me, is how they went after what was in front of them and not the sources. Congrats. This is all over your head.
I did that already to you, you did not look at the video I linked a while back because you are too busy arguing poorly.