Why isn't Ner'zhul acknowledged more?

[Murdra-wildhammer (Murdra)]

@Gornur-nerzhul

@Murdra-wildhammer

Was Ner’zhul’s spec of existence even common knowledge prior to Wrath?

In War3 there were Scourge units who called out stuff like “For Ner’zhul” and “My life for Ner’zhul” but it’s unknown if the click on quotes can be considered reliable sources. Meanwhile the Horde quest to kill Amnennar the Coldbringer in Vanilla mentions that Amnennar had a direct link to Ner’zhul displaying the knowledge was present. However it’s not certain if it was wide spread knowledge or more known by a select few that Ner’zhul was connected with the Scourge.

If the former, the Horde as a whole didn’t make a big deal out of it and if the later then the Horde leadership didn’t want to advertise that Ner’zhul was connected and happily let Arthas have the face of the Scourge spotlight.

I get the impression that Ner’zhul was viewed under the same light as Gul’dan, individuals who betrayed their own kind in exchange for power (or just void nuts). They don’t consider them to be “one of their own”.

Because the Horde has no issues naming locations after Orgrim, Grom and Kargath (who all have skeletons in their closets, but none came close to the kind of destruction that Gul’dan and Ner’zhul unleashed).

@Zuleika-hyjal

If they had more time, sure. But it’s pretty clear the movie was forcibly cut short (reportedly 20-25 minutes were cut out), and they barely had time to cover all the storylines they wanted to get to as it was.

I was thinking more along the lines of a hypothetical sequel, or at least name dropped, as that is where Ner’zhul’s story really begins.

[Shredow-moon-guard (Shredow)]

He isn’t cool or flashy like Arthas and they made the really really dumb decision to have arthas be the sole lich king in Wrath which relegated Ner’zhul to being a Warcraft 2-3 exclusive character. Players who only played in the WoW era have no real idea who he is or how important he was to the story.

Basically, Blizzard made dumb decisions even fourteen years ago, and we’re still seeing the after effects of those decisions to this day.
I was surprised, and glad that he at least got to be a boss in Shadowlands. It’s something at least.

[Evelysaa-moon-guard (Evelysaa)]

I think Ner’zhul is the character that gets crapped on the most in the lore. He’s someone who continuously got tricked and tortured despite what he did being minor compared to everyone else. Someone to be whipped by Blizzard. From Warcraft 3 onwards his existence was nothing but pain. Then his soul gets destroyed and that’s it.

[Denona-khazgoroth (Denona)]

@Anenzo-wyrmrest-accord

I don’t really agree that a story’s value is determined by if the bad guy is a raid boss though. If anything I think WoW should put much less focus on raids than it does.

This is one area I like with Destiny 2. Most end of raid bosses aren’t even the big bads of that expansion / season. The only ones that fit that bill are;

Corta (Destiny 1, Corta’s End raid in The Dark Below Expansion)
Oryx (Destiny 1, King’s Fall raid in The Taken King Expansion)
Aksis, Archon Prime (Destiny 1, Wrath of the Machine raid in the Rise of Iron expansion)
Riven (Destiny 2, Last Wish raid in the Forsaken Expansion)
Galhran (Destiny 2, Crown of Sorrow raid, Season of Opulence)

Galhran is stretching it as Season of Opulence doesn’t really have one. We return to the Leviathan Ship to entertain Emperor Calus. But he also asks us to kill Galhran, as the Sorrow Bearer has become mind controlled by Savathun via the Crown of Sorrow. I decided to include him in the list because he kinda is but isn’t.

That’s it.

Atheon, Emperor Calus, Argos, Val Ca’uor, Insurrection Prime, Sanctified Mind, Taniks The Abomination, and Rhulk are not the main antagonists of their respective expansions / seasons. Those are;

The Black Heart (D1 launch)
Dominus Ghaul (D2 launch)
Panoptes, Infinite Mind (D2: Curse of Orisis)
Xol, Will of the Thousands (D2: Warmind)
Siviks, Lost to None (D2: Season of the Forge)
The Witness (D2: Shadowkeep via the luna Pyramid and the Nightmares. We do not battle The Witness in Shadowkeep)
Eramis, Kell of Darkness (D2: Beyond Light)
Savathun, The Witch Queen (D2: The Witch Queen).

Note: This list only includes expansions / seasons that have raids. I did not include Vault of Glass 2.0 (Atheon) in the list. As it just was porting over VoG from D1 to D2. But it was done in Season of the Splicer, which has Quiria as the main antagonist anyway.

[Anyaceltica-llane (Anyaceltica)]

He got thrown under the buss to make Arthas the leading villain at the time. I’ve always maintained that the Lich King was far more of an interesting being when he was a fusion of both Ner’zhul and Arthas. “It was Arthas all along” was just another example of straight up pandering to his fan club in that expansion. As far as I’m concerned, both of the character arcs ended when Arthas put on the helmet.

@Denona-khazgoroth

But come Shadowlands, Mal’ganis be like, “Arthas was my greatest pawn. I was never tricked by Ner’zhul and him. I was ahead of them the whole time!!!”. It makes him seem like he is high on copium.

A master-manipulator species isn’t that good at deception when the developers have to retroactively retcon material to make them look competent.

[Depprave-onyxia]

I think it’d be a cool shift if they never used Arthas or Illidan in a movie. Why expand on them, do the star wars thing and bring in new characters for what amounts to a new generation. Nerzhul is a nice link between guldan and illidan and arthas.