The whole bit about keeping the Undead Scourge from rampaging the world, someone must be there to keep them in check says Ghost Daddy followed by Ever-Burning Man. Then this crazy lady kicks Ever-Burning Man’s butt, breaks his hat, opens door to another realm. Ever-Burning Man takes hat bits with him to the other realm, we don’t speak its name… Meaning the helm bitties and whatever control it had went with it to the other realm severing the connection entirely.
What was the Undead Scourge doing, did they go bonkers or just chilling in Northrend? Shouldn’t more Undead Scourge be set free from control and become like the Forsaken? We didn’t bring anything back with us from place that won’t be named to handle the situation. WHAT HAPPENED?
There was hints that rogue necromancers would be able to seize control of the remaining undead once the helm was destroyed and that would become a problem.
Basically that crown is turned into the ‘Crown of Free Will’ at the end of Shadowlands. Canonically all the undead should effectively have their own will now. Most likely will be their own independent isolated factions in the north just hanging out until called upon by a Plot-Device™.
Helm of Domination shattered, so the Lich King ceased being able to control the Scourge. Lower level scourge went feral, post Shadowlands the Silver Hand and Ebon Blade worked to basically wipe them out.
As per the pre-expansion event, the undead canonically went nuts. Icecrown became a desolate warzone as the undead no longer were helmed by a singular source. Over time, particular undead of power managed to acquire their own swarms of undead for their own goals.
That is a complicated question at times, but yes - however, the Undead Scourge consists primarily of the mindless variety; the same that still haunt the Plaguelands and Tirisfal to this day. However any actual intelligent undead do now have ‘free-will’, albeit with absolutely nothing cushioning them or guiding them onto a path, leading to no shortage of chaos potentially.
That is KIND of not right - throughout the story the helm is still VERY much in tune with the Maw (Which was retconned to be its true origins, and not the masterwork of the Nathrezim. While that’s still ‘the case’ it used to solely be a superweapon of the Legion), it isn’t until around 9.2 that we reforge it into the Bionicle Mask look-alike thing that is the Crown of Wills, meant to resist attempts of Domination.
A fun fact on top of this: The whole ‘There must always be a Lich King’ was actually slapped onto the end of WoTLK, all to justify Bolvar (A fan favorite character due to the first cinematic ‘The Wrath Gate’ being beloved) becoming the next Lich King.
Yes. WoTLK quite literally slapped on lore. The more ya’ know.
Same here. While I can accept new ideas or additions to the lore - it being no more than a joint deal kinda ruins it.
Look. I like the Nathrezim being double agents. I find that’s one of the few additions to the lore I can get behind.
However, that should of not taken away from their efforts. Have it just be the addition of ‘The Nathrezim, channeling into their heritage’ sort of thing. Not ‘Oh we contacted Zovaal Boi’.
That was literally a single NPC that said that, and it was an assumption on his part.
It also never made sense from a lore point of view.
If there was no lich king, the scourge would cease being created. Which means once the scourge is wiped out, they’re gone for good. Yea, the Scourge that existed would go wild and crazy, but again, once they were killed, they’d be gone for good.
If anything, the shadowlands change to this actually fixed that part of the lore that they broke because they wanted to write the Alliance losing a character in WotLK.
They will either be used in a future plot point or they are so decayed they don’t really represent a threat. While the scourge lore wise don’t rot. They would just naturally smash themselves to bits without sentience.
What happened offscreen wasn’t a retcon. Scourge were there. Horde and Alliance teamed up after Shadowlands to fight back. And things are fine for the most part now.
That was, frankly, a monumentally dumb plot point that they only introduced because they decided they wanted to bring Bolvar back as a death knight. It never made any sense that the Scourge would be stronger as a mindless, feral horde than as a functioning army, unless Arthas was just that stupid (and he’s pretty stupid, but I don’t think he’s that stupid).
I would love if everyone just forgot that stupid line was ever put in the game.
“I don’t like the new expanded lore so it must be dumb and a retcon. This is based on my personal feelings after watching a youtuber and I am totally can think for myself.”