Back in Wrath Alliance players though he was too much of a hothead and was making the rest of them look bad. At the time he was the Alliance’s Garrosh, except unlike Garrosh, Varian was actually calling the shots.
Especially after Varian became the first ever character to break what used to be an unwritten rule that all conflicts between the Alliance and Horde should be left ambiguous over who started it.
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The dead shouldn’t be praised just because they are dead. You are correct that none of us are perfect and people can better themselves… but the dead are past that, now their legacy is set and we need to accept that.
But the legacy of Varian is that he did make up with his son. That he did better himself and that while he slid here and there he ultimately made himself the sort of person that focused on defending the weak and not as a conqueror. He could have easily been Garrosh, heck those two were foils for a reason. He did not go down the same road however and that is partial thanks to the people surrounding him.
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Well the point is that he wasn’t liked in Wrath/Cata
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So? People are allowed to change and grow. By the time he died he was the poster child of the Alliance.
Oh, right forgot I was talking to someone that can’t imagine the alliance being anything expect perfect. With even their flaws informing how perfect they are.
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Perfect? No, striving to better themselves? Yup.
So I’m gonna play a bit of Devil’s Advocate I imagine Blizzard’s idea with the Reclamation was wanting to originally do another Battle of Gilneas like in Cata whole charge through the city and kill a bunch of mobs and some named enemies all concluding with the fight at the Cathedral which probably would’ve been made a bigger deal.
…What we got and likely due to dev time was something rushed and undercooked effectively skipping build-up tension and climax for immediate story climax.
Like why are the Scarlets here? Who is this named Scarlet Lady? Why did she turn into a Lightspawn?
I think the WORSE part is you can see some of the good the cinematic with Tess and Genn is good, I like it.
Genn visiting Liam’s Grave and if you’ve been playing a Worgen since Cata effectively a man who you fought alongside, a brother who mourned for you and put himself back together when he realized you were not only alive but also sane once more.
And a man who gave his life for his father, something that would shape Genn for the rest of his development even going as far as to find a surrogate for him in Anduin.
It’s a touching moment to be there and listen to Genn.
I like the aftermath, I like the small details and the dialogue of the returning NPC’s it’s all ‘Good’ but the ACTUAL reclamation? It just felt INCREDIBLY undercooked in all aspects from the lack of Worgen representation (An issue that Blizzard no doubt heard with their Heritage quest but ignored to address here, even something as simple as Tess naming Crowley as the Grand Marshal of Gilneas’s Military would’ve been a nice token gesture.) This include’s the inclusion of Forsaken I ACTUALLY don’t mind them helping the Gilneans.
Heck I don’t want them fighting either, but they should’ve used this to introduce some NPC stand-ins for Worgen and Forsaken, bickering and arguing and unable to work together and have you the player knock some heads together against a common enemy.
It all feels like they maybe wanted to address these things but neither had the manpower or time to really do so as a result we get something lacking and undercooked in just about every aspect, retaking Gilneas needed to be a full-proper questline something with length and time to it, but I have to be realistic and realize asking Blizzard to effectively handle a post-expansion questline with this much effort is hard.
I guess the grand question that needs to be laid at the writers is this they leave it open for more to eventually happen here and they need to… Hopefully it means some revamped starting zones for the Worgen and Forsaken and those questions and answers may not even come until Midnight (and that’s a huge assumption to make.)
TL:DR I think the Reclamation didn’t intentionally leave addressing this stuff out at least not fully, I feel like time and dev resources made it so they had to put something a lot more half-dashed than what they were advertising to us.
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Yeah most people on the Alliance (who don’t also play the Horde) generally liked him quite a bit.
Color me shocked than. I usually heard more negatives than positives about him. Than again, we all like characters that others may despise 
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Varian has a messed legacy, but he did eventually overcame most of his flaws.
He wasn’t perfect, but he got better.
And the way he died was badass and thats what most remember now.
Reading Wolfheart made me like him, and that book makes a lot of his flaws clear.
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I quit after Wrath and relapsed in Legion so I missed most of anime hair rage king.
His status as a fury warrior is what irked me. Because I do think the idea of normal humans, even those in Olympic physiques, fighting fantasy nonsense that can easily tear them to shreds with clever tactics, ingenuity and firepower can be really interesting. I just described why I adore WH40k’s Imperial Guard.
But Varian was just really mad and apparently had two wolves inside him. Which let him overtake duck mothering Tauren in the gladiatorial slave arenas that apparently Thrall of all people never cracked down on.
Seriously remains insane to me the Horde had a lot of slavery. The Sin’Dorei, Darkspear and like Grim Totem doing that I can see but you’d think it’d be a real sensitive topic for the Orcs and Forsaken l. But I digress.
I’d have made him an Arms Warrior styled character who was a brilliant tactician, strategist and statesman. Also I’d make him favor polearms. Because if I’m fighting someone who could snap me in half I’m keeping as much distance as possible.
You’d think any fistfight between a human and Orc would go like;
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If there’s one thing I mourn from the vanilla days, it’s base strength.
Because it was never NOT funny to me that a dwarf had the same base strength as a tauren. Just get absolutely wrecked armwrestling by a ginger with the boar tails, Korotsh Bloodblade. Oh well.
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Short Angry Drunken Dwarf go burr 
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I mean, the in game logic is probably rocky titanforged strength, but the visual remains hilarious and I’m claiming that it’s canon until I’m proven wrong.
Especially given certain male orc warrior players – not all, obviously, there’s a lot of very sane male orc warriors.
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Obviously this isnt in vanilla WoW, but later wasn’t it canonically stated that Worgen are physically the strongest race in the Alliance?
Also, in regards to the topic above about Varian, he sucked cause like the rest of the Wrynn family he’s a narrative blackhole cause he has to be in the spotlight with all his Human Potential. And having him be Goldrinn’s Champion when worgen are RIGHT THERE, is just asinine.
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I’m assuming worgen are like night elves – agile and fast.
Though details are lost in the mist of my memory, I think we were past base stats for races by Cata.
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My main objection to Varian is that he had a distressing tendency to make the narrative revolve around him and how cool he was and how much pathos and angst he had and he was generally insufferably written to appeal to the teenage boy at heart crowd.
Also his hair.
But man, he was SUCH a comic book character.
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I agree that worgen are likely agile and fast like Night Elves, though I’d argue less so than the Night Elves. I’m pretty sure they are stronger though, I mean in the Wolfheart novel the worgen show up and easily take on the Tauren and Orcs to help the Night Elves.
Then we also see Genn just easily push an orc away in the BfA cinematic.
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When I think of agility and the worgen, I think Of course they’re agile, their victim has their stomach torn open and the poor sap is missing all their limbs, so of course the poor guy got tossed like a rag doll
They are really strong though, considering like you said, Genn, a old man in his late 70s man handled a orc pretty easily in the BfA cinematic.
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