People are talking about the new expansion being more grounded and open-world based, instead of cosmic universal and all that, since it went so horribly with Shadowlands. Theres lots of things left on Azeroth to explore-and in my opinion, alot of those are lasting consquences. Dragons are going to go extinct, for one. However, I am more interested in something else: The Scourge.
Back when we were fighting the Lich King, there was alot about how there must be a lich king to keep the scourge under control. However, considering how much chaos Arthas caused as the Lich King, what could actually be worse?
The most logical explanation I’ve seen is a loss of tactics. No more sadistic goals or anything like that-not even a sargeras-like figure trying to prevent a worse fate only the desire to kill and destroy an entire planet. The Scourge, without control, would just attack EVERYTHING. No mercy, no discrimination-and every thing they kill adds another to their ranks. Plus killing undead in general is kinda tricky depending on how many times they can come back. So, heres my hypothetical idea for at least one plotline in the new expansion: The Uncontrolled Scourge. Because, you know-the helmet broke? We’ve kind of been ignoring that while tramping through “The Afterlife THat was Totally There All Along”. I, for one, am very up for a zombie-apocalypse battling expansion.
Not sure what the prompt is here. Just voicing my thoughts. Do you agree? Disagree? THis probably wont actually happen, but we should hope while we can.
Ah, my friends. Let me tell you a tale. A tale of a year-long, cross-server and cross-faction campaign, that started with those very questions and ended at the top of the world…
Well glad to hear I’m not the only one who thought of this!
I’m assuming this is over now, though?
Because even though we did go to Icecrown to stop the Scourge, even with the Jailor gone-the Scourge is still around and very much a threat
We’re done with our year-long campaign, having finished that off on December.
This year, we’re going around Azeroth and tying up loose ends. Some of them have to do with the Scourge, who are feral and mindless again, but not all of our campaigns will.
None of us have been mentioning the Shadowlands. We simply do not acknowledge it, beyond the extent of: some of our leaders have been missing for a long time now.
They were decimated in Wrath of the Lich King. After that, what remained of them were kept in check by Bolvar (a plot point that I actually think was unnecessary and dumb). Then with the opening of Shadowlands, what was left of them was largely culled as they attacked cities and got it handed to them in Icecrown (pre-expansion events). Now I imagine they aren’t much to worry about and are largely scattered and few.
Okay, but it doesn’t seem to matter that they’re decimated.
From what I can tell, if you want to ressurect with your mind intact, you need to do some complex-lich-level stuff. But if you just want a zombie who’s only desire is to kill and make more zombies-with no higher intelligence-I’m pretty sure Scourge can just be recycled. Thats why the Scourge is threatening at all-they’re endless, and each time they kill someone a new one appears.
I could be wrong about this and missed a detail about Scourge being killed by holy magic or something or other dying forever, but still. Considering Paladins are considered the best contenders for Death knights, its hard to believe.
I always understood it that the Scourge was largely created and raised by necromancers/Arthas/DKs/etc. and that they could possibly also be created via classic zombie fiction as when a Scourge undead bites or scratches a living person and that person dies only to rise again. However, I’ve never really seen it portrayed that the Scourge is literally endless and that there is some law of symmetry in the WoW universe that for every Scourge killed another automatically materializes into existence. If that were the case, it would make the entire WoTLK expansion seem pointless. It would make me wonder how we ever made headway into Northrend at all or into the Plaugelands and such before that. Likewise, it would make me wonder how we managed to accomplish anything during the Shadowlands prepatch event.
This isn’t to say that people can’t headcanon what they want in terms of how the Scourge works. Lord knows I can’t stop 'em. I’m just explaining from my own perspective why it seems the Scourge isn’t the bigger deal in the story that many think it is or should be. They seem to be a finite force whose numbers CAN be increased but aren’t necessarily automatically so. The whole “the Scourge must always have a leader” thing rings hollow to me because a coordinated force is always more dangerous than a directionless one and implies that for some reason, as Arthas tried to take over the world, he somehow held the Scourge back. Because one naturally holds back when attempting to overrun in scorched-earth fashion…
So again, as I see it, the Scourge was a force to be reckoned with. Their numbers were fought against and thinned from the moment they began through various campaigns all the way through WoTLK and Shadowlands prepatch. Now they might still exist but they aren’t what they once were or even close really. shrug
The Shadowlands pre-patch event was so bad compared to what it should have been. Even the bosses in Icecrown, when they materialized, were pulled from the Shadowlands. There wasn’t enough straight up scourge stuff, invasions out in the world like in Legion etc. for it to feel like anything major happened.
It’s cool that people on our server did such a long campaign that actually addressed it.
Turns out “there must always be a lich king” was fairly irrelevant as the Scourge went crazy for a couple of weeks and then went home and opened a bakery or something
Tongue in cheek aside, I think the whole Shadowlands/Jailer thing would have been much more interesting if we had actual Azeroth-based buildup. Frankly, the pre-patch event should have been an expansion. They could have given us a resurgent Scourge, with maybe Sylvanas at its apparently head… albeit without the crown of domination. But the Cult of the Damned and various Scourge leaders keep mentioning this Jailer/Zovaal fellow, and a big part of what we are doing other than rallying against the Scourge is trying to figure out who the hell is actually leading the Scourge now that the Lich King has been dethroned. Who are these new skeletal Val’kyr? And where does Sylvanas fit into the situation? Why has someone who hates the Scourge come to lead it? What’s she planning? When the time did come to go to the Shadowlands, it might have actually felt more relevant to do so.
Anyway, now, we are where we are. Shadowlands is done, and frankly, despite being a HUGE Scourge fan, I’d rather leave that plotline die (pardon the irony).
Blizz has already managed to butcher my absolute favourite piece of lore by relegating Arthas/Ner’zhul into some weird puppets of the stupidest, most underwhelming villain in WoW’s history. I would ask them to kindly stay the heck away from it - better the Scourge is forgotten than further tainted by appalling writing.
If the dragon leaks are true going forward, then good. Let them try something smaller and Azeroth based, and then I’ll see if I ever trust them again lol.
I always assumed Bolvar needed to step in because the scourge would then have a power vacuum and would be easy to manipulate. If scourge are able to break away like the forsaken and some DKs did, who’s to say a particularly talented necromancer can’t walk in and start laying claim to now masses of directionless bodies?
Hmm but I guess that didn’t happen though. I didn’t do the prepatch nor BFA/shadowlands so I wouldn’t know for sure, but I’m hearing they really did just go the feral scourge route? I guess we’ll see once Bolvar makes it back to Icecrown (if he lived… Idk what’s going on down there in super hell)
Gets me brainstorming a possible whole expansion that starts with Sylvannas busting the crown and getting the hell out of dodge. The pieces are scattered and now the players team up with bolvar to recover the them.
However powerful necromancer, rogue death Knights and sanlayn get ahold of them and are using the fragments to control pockets of the Scourge. Essentially becoming undead warlords attempting to take control of ice crown and it’s armies. So there’s lots of infighting between them and general chaos. There’s some that are attacking Stormwind and Orgrimmar and other parts of Azeroth. While others are fighting each other in Ice Cream attempting to take control of the wastelands and citadel.
The players and Bolvar work to recover the fragments, either through direct combat or taking advantage of the in fighting.
Recovering the fragments would conclude to yoloing into shadowlands.
I did hear the endless thign somewhere, but I’m not SURE about it, so that makes alot more sense. I just feel like there theoretically is SOME reason the Scourge always have to have a leader, and the novel describes giving in to the helmet-essentially failing at keeping them in check-as guarenteed to bring ‘a world of death.’ And thats all just nothing?
…Maybe thats for the best, based on other posts here. I’m not sure I trust Blizzard to give the whole threat the Lich King-or lack of-what it deserves after they turned him into a puppet of Zovaal.
