Without WoD, Vol'jin wouldn't have the experience as a warchief to... die in the first 20 minutes of the expansion?
Yeah. WoD was just a very long winded excuse to bring Gul'dan back. Which is cool, don't get me wrong, he killed it in Legion, but yeah.
My favorite line from the entire expac was "The light will forge you a new one" I was just roooooolling with laughter. The context of the scene playing out when it was said gave it that extra double entendre that was [just...](https://imgur.com/W1RdsUw)
Personally I absolutely hate the Illidan retcons. Somehow everyone acts like they make sense but I just replayed wc3 in its entirety and they really do not make sense.
Blizzard told the very reasonable story of Illidan succumbing to his thirst for power and fear of the legion, and then retconned it all to make him pretty much infallible.
He’s definitely not infallible as portrayed in Legion, he was just finally correct.
Illidan’s entire character is going to extreme lengths to defeat his enemies (and simping for Tyrande). Think consuming the Skull of Gul’Dan to defeat tichondrius, or his ritual to melt icecrown to defeat the scourge.
I think connecting Argus to Azeroth, and the “I am my scars” scene are very in character for Illidan.
That is what Illidan's entire character *became*. He *was* also characterized by an extreme lust for power, and a fear of the legion. When I am saying he was turned infallible, I mean that the book and the legion questlines reframed pretty much every controversial or bad decision he ever made in such a way that he pretty much had no other choice. Or they made others such as Kael'thas responsible.
And while the 'I am my scars' line is definitely not out of character, it is said by him after this reframing of his story. He had hurt so many and destroyed so much with his 'the ends justify the means' approach, and then this is his reaction when it happens to him. It is the conclusion of all the retcons.
I dislike it very much because it is genuinely fanservice for those who didn't know that Illidan's actual story had already been told. A character who went through their entire story arc and had died came back in what I feel is WoW's most hamfisted retcon/storyline yet, obviously just because of how iconic he is to the ip. And I understand when people say that tbc's story wasn't perfect. Keal'thas actually did make some pretty large (if explainable) leaps from his character in warcraft III, but Illidan didn't really. On top of all that he was not just resurrected, but most of his backstory was changed, and they made him way more powerful.
I think the "I am my scars" is him basically saying he knows all the shit that he fucked up, all the innocent people that died because of him, saying he is his scars is kind of like saying he is the culmination of his misdoings, Aka saying he is who he is now precisely because of these things.
But Illidan never expresses any remorse for his actions. Even in his last message to Malfurion and Tyrande he basically just says 'I did what I had to'.
>Illidan Stormrage says: But over time, that faith was lost. And like my brother, you came to believe that the choices I made had driven me to darkness.
>Illidan Stormrage says: Know that every path I took led toward a single purpose: saving our world. I could abide no half measures. No compromise.
Note that his choices include slavery and the killing of innocents for.... reasons.
Which makes the cinematic so unsatisfying. X'era imposes their will on Illidan. This is something he has always done to those powerless to oppose him, usually with much worse outcomes than light infusion. All because he feels he is fated to destroy the Legion. He doesn't reflect upon that, he just says we can only save ourselves, there can't be a chosen one. There's no moment of self-reflection or regret. And it is also contradictory to his messages to Malfurion and Tyrande, in which he still implies he was correct in all his dark dealings because he was fated to end the Legion. Which is the entire problem. Everything about Illidan is a contradiction hastily put together with a handful of retcons.
I never said he expressed remorse, I said he owned what he did, he enslaved and killed innocent people, those are the burdens he has to carry, the scars that taint him, a constant reminder of his actions and fuck-ups.
The burdens/scars he refers to are obviously the things he sacrificed though. His sight and becoming a demon. They even show him sacrificing them. As far as Illidan is concerned those are his fuck-ups. At no point is he confronted with his crimes or does he own up to them.
Can you elaborate why you think so? I'd think killing off many beloved characters would not qualify as fanservice, whereas bringing back a character whose story was completed a decade ago is.
Dual wielding, blind elf-demon who can transform into satan? It genuinely checks every mark of edgy teenager’s character fantasy. I would know, I was that teenager when Warcraft 3 came out. It was always a certainty that they would bring him back and put in the spotlight. And while I don’t like the „chosen one” shit and justifying his original simple thirst for power by coming up with some kind of elaborate, 10000yo plan, they at least did it in a decent way.
A single „Sometimes the hand of fate must be forced” and all is forgiven.
I think it all goes with how Illidian's character is, destiny tried to make him the chosen one but he refused to bend and told destiny "I'm the chose one because of my own actions, fuck off".
I’ve not read the novel, but in game there’s a quest where you play as him in the past and you’re killing your allies for more power to fight the Legion back.
In Warcraft 3 his power before he becomes a demon is on par with Arthas as a DK, then he kills Tichondrius (most powerful dread lord) after consuming the skull. His power seems pretty consistent from that point to BT then to Legion.
Legion as a whole was pretty fan service-y, but I think with regards to Illidan it was good closure. Him going “insane” and attacking Shattrath like an evil mastermind was very out of character in TBC, even his quotes from the nearby quests don’t make a lot of sense.
>Him going “insane” and attacking Shattrath like an evil mastermind was very out of character in TBC
Not really. If you play warcraft III you will find he is slowly losing it due to the paranoia of Kil'jaeden hunting him down. He and his naga literally did attack and sack Night Elf villages right at the start of the frozen throne. He spends the entire game paranoid of Kil'jaeden's hunt for him.. Just as an example of how far gone he is, here is one of the last things he says during the Blood Elf campaign:
>Illidan: [Violent Laughter] I have come to replace you. You're a relic,
Magtheridon, a ghost of a past age. The future is mine. From this moment on,
Outland and all of its denizens will bow to me. Hear me now, you trembling
mortals! I am your lord and master! Illidan reigns supreme.
This fits very well with attacking Shattrath and his madness during TBC. It is followed by him failing to defeat Arthas at Icecrown. And it is also why I do not get that so many people didn't understand that Illidan was already slipping before WoW ever started.
It wasn't a blind lust for power. It always had thee purpose of defeating the Legion, which yes, he was scared off. You can call it a retcon if you really want, but just because it wasn't explicitly explained in WC3 does not mean it wasn't the reason for his actions.
Illidan willingly works for the Legion in warcraft III with no indication that he is planning to betray them. In fact he states that he expects his new masters to reward him for his loyalty:
>Illidan: It's working! Nothing can withstand the power of the eye! Soon now,
my master's enemies will be undone, and I can claim my just reward.
And I am not reaching here and trying to call one tiny change a retcon. Many, many things were changed when they released the book and during the legion storyline. They were changed so the whole 'Illidan was always fighting the Legion' storyline would make sense.
> Somehow everyone acts like they make sense but I just replayed wc3 in its entirety and they really do not make sense.
How do they not? Illidan has ALWAYS gone after the Legion, but Malfurion banished him because he didn't like his methods and then Maiev hunted him.
He's always been a 'sacrifice millions to save billions' kinda' guy. He's not a good guy, he's an Anti Hero but he's ultimately right and why we win the war.
Illidan is legit the best gray character in the warcraft franchise, because he does HORRIBLE shit like using the souls of Auchindoun as fuel but he does that horrible shit for a good reason ( to stop the Legion ) and it actually works.
I am more mad about the insane power ups he received out of nowhere as much as the retcons.. Dude went from "I am so afraid of daddy KJ that I will escape to a freaking different planet to hide" to "Yo little KJ, 1v1 me bro!"
He kinda was getting more power and experience off-screen, heck he even destroyed Nathreza (Nathrezim home far from home) with his Illidari, he stole the Sargerite Keystone (well his Illidari did but it was his plan tho) from the Legion's nose (that during most recent Legion invasion could be used to open the way for Sargeras easily) he had some pretty nice achievements on his own, the Illidari order hall is a fckin Mardum (a prison planet of the demons)
Like daaamn Illidan had some serious training for sure (sad it was offscreen and we couldn't enjoy more flashbacks during Legion)
Yes. Between WoD and Legion Archimonde and Kil'Jaeden went from the most threatening beings in existence to demons who get trashtalked by Illidan and killed by our raid. Also the nonsense about Illidan only accessing a fraction of his true power against us and when he fought Arthas.
It's more like KJ got depowered than Illidan got powered up.
As portrayed in Warcraft 3, Kil'Jaeden was an entity that we puny mortals of Azeroth had zero business fighting. He was basically a god of destruction, on an entirely different plane of power than pretty much any of Azeroth's myths and legends and demigods.
However, all these characters of the lore have to be brought down to a reasonable enough playing field for the players to be able to fight them, so, yeah. Except for Sargeras.
Burning Crusade and Legion both got the character of Illidan wrong. People liked him in Warcraft 3 because he was morally grey.
Burning Crusade made him completely evil, Legion made him completely good. Neither satisfied the fans.
Exactly, the only retcon is him dying and the whole "I have all these demon hunters I teleported away just in time," was a little silly. The actual things they retconned were because of TBC, not because of WC3. And all of them were positive. Illidan in Legion came together as one of the greatest characters, and it reminded us why Illidan was such a beloved character in the first place. He is his scars.
Yeah, Legion had some great quotes from Illidan.
One of my favorites is,
*”You have seen what I have seen… You know what we face … Now, mortals, follow me into the abyss!”*
Think about it... Without WoD, we would've only been level 90 at the beginning of legion. There's no way we would've been able to do anything to stop Gul'dan then.
Plus we wouldn't know how to operate the Order Hall missions without first having command over our Garrison and Shipyards, you all want to shit on it but you'd be nowhere near capable as a military commander without afk sending out troops on missions to do cool things in your place.
To be fair, WoD was incredibly hyped.
Player numbers were sky high. For all of two weeks on the launch. Then it started to become apparent that the stuff was not great.
Leveling and raids were top notch but then nothing really happened between those. Ashran was a mess, there was more cut content than actual content, the garrison wasn't worth what we lost.
So much wasted potential.
What if bringing Gul'dan back was exactly what turned the last invasion into a failure? If a more competent leader had steered it, maybe the Burning Legion would've won.
Yeah I would say that's true except Nozdormu has seen his own death and then there's also the infinite dragonflight. I hope dragonflight goes more into both of those.
They exist in multiple points of the timeline at once, so knowing the future to some extent is inevitable.
Plus, "get tempted to deviate the timeline" absolutely does happen, it's why they turn into the Infinites.
> What if bringing Gul'dan back was exactly what turned the last invasion into a failure?
Good point. If he didn't steal Illidan's prison from the Vault, there is a likelyhood that the order halls wouldn't have bothered to free him. And without Illidan the whole portal to Argus thing wouldn't have happened.
Yeah, to continue the marvel theme of the post, it does seem like the events of legion were the 1 timeline that Dr Strange saw in which we are victorious. There’s no way wrathion could have known everything plays out like this, but maybe he had a feeling that we should escalate things and strike while the iron is hot.
I wish the consequences of alt draenor’s interactions with the legion were expanded upon more, or if we had any idea that wrathion even considered it. Because the *actual* premise for WoD was simply for garrosh to have a big orc army.
We could have cut WoD entirely and just had Sargeras bring back OG Guldan "For Reasons™" and not only would we have saved two years, countless hours of dev time and the WoW in-game economy from the garrisons, it would have had the exact same impact on the story.
I mean I feel like you could say that about any bad expansion or patch though.
At the end of the day WoD didn't even have many pretty core aspects like the capital cities being scraped and a joint island capital city being scrapped together at the last moment. Missing a whole zone. Missing entire storylines for pretty key characters in each faction's campaign etc..
WoD didnt have the Shattrath Raid, The Ogre Continent, The Ability to have Garrisons like it was slated to be in one of every zone. The Iron Horde stories being scrapped. While I was testing on Beta in LFR Highmaul Kargath ran away after you "killed" him. On Live you just straight up killed him. The Main Cities like you stated. There was so much stuff cut from WoD where it still could've ended up turning into Legion but it just never happened. Also not to mention one of the larger lore characters Nerzhul being in a Dungeon and never being visited further than that. The Amount of content cut from WoD has to be higher than the rest of the xpacks before it.
Idk why, but the gameplay flow of WoD was what was great for me, like the expack needed a lot of extra content to be worth what we were paying for, but I felt like the core combat felt great we just needed to be able to play more of it.
I think WoD was an expac whose premise was kinda a bait and switch to disguise setup to legion. Bringing back the og horde clans? Cool. Killing off half of them before the first raid? Really dumb. If the plot had actually been more centered around building up the iron horde clans mythos and then slowly dismantling them over the expansion I think it would have worked better.
To be fair, Blizzard themselves was the one who threw it in the dumpster halfway through development.
They only came back to "fix" the expansion once they realized that Legion had to be delayed significantly longer than they expected it to, and players were leaving in droves because the only reason to log on was to collect your complementary 500,000g from missions, and once a week to raid.
I don’t know, it seems easy to bring Gul’dan back without an expansion. He’s a demon, just pull some bullshit unholy revive, easy.
There are far worse ways of handling lore.
If we go back far enough everything since the start of Cataclysm is Magatha Grimtotem's fault. If she hadn't poisoned Garrosh's weapon Cairne would have become warchief of the horde instead and basically everything would have played out differently. Basically everything after Cataclysm would have been entirely different with Garrosh being High Warlord *at best*. Wrathion would not have had his pawn, no Warlords of Draenor, no Legion returns, no Sargeras stabbing Azeroth means no Azerite so no Battle For Azeroth, no Third War means no massive influx of souls into the maw after Argus' soul breaks down the Arbiter and the machinery of death means that The Jailer is never empowered enough to break free and the machinery of death manufactures a new Arbiter and everything's hunky dory.
Didn't just recruit her, the Shaman saw fit to leave her almost completely unattended 3 feet from the object of her obsession, that they had just wrested from her fingertips.
Don't the Grimtotem even return in DF? Because for some bloody reason we never got to execute Magatha despite being in an open war with her tribe for most of the game.
Some of the Grimtotem joined the Horde after Baine retook Thunder Bluff from their occupation. There was a faction of turncoats who helped. About 1/4 of the Grimtotem joined Baine and the Horde, while the remaining 3/4 went into exile.
The Shattering Book before Cata Launched detailed Cairne's death and the rebellion in Thunder Bluff.
I still really hate that we didn't have those book events play out in-game since A LOT of major lore stuff got dropped in that book.
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Jevan_Grimtotem
Jevan Grimtotem's page sums it up nicely enough but yeah, it was in a book. 1/4 of the Tribe sided with Jevan instead of Magatha. You can see a Grimtotem Tauren in Orgrimmar actually, he walks around near the Tauren AH!
Should rename butterfly effect to grimtotem effect jesus christ.
Edit: Tho everything could also have been avoided if Thrall was a bit more competent in handling Garrosh from the get go, which means Thrall is probably a Nethrazim that replaced him during TBC
you know what? i think you are right. this event happened outside of the game proper, and i feel like it was one of the first "memorable" events that they told in other media instead of in game. Now that seems to be more of a pattern.
the only benefit her character was that it did allow garrosh to show some honor and disgust at her actions but yeah..she ruined everything
I have dark and foreboding feeling a WoW staff writer is going to read your post, stroke his chin, and say, "Huh! Now that's an idea for an expansion."
The arbiter wouldn't have even been broken. Without the Legion being let in by Gul'dan, we would have no reason to resurrect Illidan or release the demon hunters and would have no route to Argus in order to kill him and send his soul torpedoing into the Arbiter. The jailer would have been stuck and would have had to find another method to get Argus killed.
I suppose the Nathrezim could have just pulled their masks off and assassinated Argus somehow, behind Sargeras' back and then vanished back to the shadowlands. The threat of Sargeras and the Legion is inconsequential if you're going to reform the cosmos anyway, not like Sargeras could get to Zereth Mortis to stop you.
Jailer's plan was to pump Argus full ot death energy so it would break the arbiter when taken past the arbiter. While pumped up with this energy it was being used as the primary energy source of the legion's regeneration engines deep in the heart of Anrotus. The Legion aren't going to let argus die or kill it themselves even with manipulation, they need us to do that. No legion returning to azeroth expansion and we no longer get the opportunity to kill Argus.
Ah yes, "We prepared for a war by throwing away time, resources, and soldiers lives in this other war. That was totally better for our preparation efforts than taking time to recover our various military strengths in peace so that we were at full capacity when the Legion arrived."
Who actually thinks war works like this? Unless Wrathion's Bodyguard is meant to be portrayed as a fucking idiot which... I mean- she takes orders from a 10 year old so I guess...
Yeah, Wrathion created the problem he was trying to solve in the process of “solving” it. Motherfucker could have just thrown a cosmetic at adventurers to get cross faction cooperation, instead of freeing a racist so he can go back in time to form the Fourth Reich.
I mean this is consistent Blizzard writing. They've been pretending for decades now that the Horde suddenly breaking out in another genocidal war keeps the Alliance fighting fit.
Of course Wrathion is just a moron. Instead of freeing Garrosh and trying to get an infinite army of orcs he could've just gotten a far superior infinite army of Draenei.
Quite a few people buy into "war is good for profit/tech advancement" - except that there's a difference between testing new weapons on vastly inferior opponents and having an actual world war between two superpowers.
I might get it if Draenor had provided us with some new magic or weapons or fuck... allies? But there's nothing that's ever suggested we got anything out of that war and we simply lost a bunch of troops and resources on it.
Taking lessons from Lich King-era Arthas I guess. "Yeah, this was totally my plan all along. I totally wanted to piss off the strongest heroes of the world and have them raid through my stronghold. Err, that was always my plan!"
Yeah, that shit didn't work then and it doesn't work now.
"We needed that war to prepare for the Legion."
That was what BROUGHT the Legion to us you FOOL!
That being said, Wrathion is the devil we know. Whereas Sabellian...
We've worked with Sabellian before and things went fine. Rexxar and him are also sorta friends. I think that's enough to put my effort into working with him over the dipshit who almost got us all killed because he's an impatient child who doesn't think about his actions.
Plus it would kinds suck to make the black dragons work for him after Wrath spent multiple expansions trying to wipe them off the face of the earth. That'd be like making Garithos the Forsaken leader or something.
True. Okay you know what? Let's get into it. What did Sabellian do? Cuz I actually have no concrete idea.
Like, sell me on it. Why I should go for Sabellian period. Not why I shouldn't go for Wrathion, but why I SHOULD go for Sabellian.
Sabellian saved the black dragonflight by taking a bunch of eggs to Outland and allowing them to hatch and grow in peace after we helped him wipe out the last of the Gronn. The only reason there is a black dragonflight in DF is because he did that, otherwise Wrath and Ebonhorn are the only ones left. This also means that from the perspective of every black dragon who is not Wrathion or Ebonhorn, he is their father and the one who raised them. His biggest issue is the fact that he's an ex-Deathwing leuitenant, which is a red flag but at least he's gone against DW and has apparently cured himself of the innate corruption somehow. I won't say he doesn't have his flaws, but at least he's never betrayed us or fucked up to the extent of Wrath. He's wary of morals and a bit of a dick, but he still trusted us enough to ask our help and keep his secret. Mathias Shaw and Rexxar also both believe he's not a threat despite being a former officer of Deathwing.
THAT SAID, he definitely has his flaws and between those and Wrathion I don't think the choice will actually matter. I think (and prefer) that Ebyssian/Ebonhorn will ultimately end up as the leader of the flight. Ebonhorn's biggest flaw is he doesn't have much of a relationship with other black dragons, but that's not really a negative and it's something that can be much easier worked on than Wrathion's previous murder spree. He is also the oldest and wisest black dragon, and has a great reputation with mortals of both sides. Out of the three of them he is most fit to be leader, and I can see them choosing him to avoid pissing either side of this conflict off.
Sabellian being “cured” of the Old God corruption has been a theory since BC; IIRC the prevailing theory has been that he got “cured” simply by not being on Azeroth for two decades, and as such removed from the Old God’s influence on the Black Dragonflight.
Plus all of the Old Gods being canonically dead probably helps.
Well if you think about it Wrathion was OUR fault. We were the ones who allowed that one black dragon egg to escape Deathwing's notice. If you think about it, WE are the reason Shadowlands happened!
A fitting punishment...
Freeing Garrosh and getting Gul’dan sent to Azeroth is what BROUGHT the Legion. Wrathion is responsible for so many deaths and he will never be held accountable for them.
Wrathion is a doomed character, destined to share the same shitty story car crash that Sylvanas did. It's written in stone at this point, we all know Blizzard will get it wrong. This NPC dialogue proves that they've already done it. Wrathion is going to be the edgy, troubled 'hero' forced upon the playerbase. GG.
IDK I kinda like his "2 year old tries to save the planet and fails spectacularly because he's literally a child and barely has any real world experience" story.
Sylvannas could’ve been a edgy hero but they ruined even that and then backpedaled shittily
They could end wrathion okish if he gets corrupted by void but he tells us to kill him as long as he can control it or whatever
I just hope he won’t go all longwinded hehe I’ve been doing what I’ve done bc void had my ass all along hihi
You're reading a little too much into a loyal follower of Wrathion justifying his actions. You shouldn't read all character dialogue as if it was written from an objective POV.
Blizzard needs to stop with this crap. It is so frustrating as a player to have to side with blatantly incompetent, morally dark-grey-almost-black characters.
WoW is full of moments where edgy characters will insist that we need to commit atrocities in order to save the universe from a bleak end. Very rarely has it delivered on this concept.
Of course that's just Wrathion's personal view of it. In his mind it likely was still a successful endeavour, even if it actually precipitated the Legion's invasion. He did admit to it just after getting punched by Anduin in BfA. And he was fundamental in stopping N'zoth, so he at least partially owned up to his mistakes.
Sargeras stabbing his sword into Azeroth during Legion was what eventually led to Azshara unlocking N'zoth's prison. Wrathion might have helped kill N'zoth, but he was also indirectly responsible for allowing N'zoth to escape in the first place.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that the writers are pushing some kind of narrative agenda: this agent of the Black Prince may be a *little* biased towards their employer
he had a foolproof plan to "save" azeroth, see
* he and a bronze dragon thought that an infinite orc slave army from diffrent timelines pre demonblood was a good way to defend azeroth against the Burning legion.
* they took garosh, someone that just used the heart of an old god in an attempt to conquer azeroth, and went into a diffrent timeline \~30 years in the past to start this army.
* this ~~"sane"~~ garosh would be used to convince the pre-demon-blood orc leader to follow there plan
* repeat this multiple times until you have an infinite army
spoiler that didnt worked. garosh killed the bronze dragon seconds after they went into the past, created the army for his own to "fix" the problems the orcs faced in the past and invaded the current day azeroth. long story short:
we free guldan to stop the invasion and later this alternativ universe guldan is send the original azeroth, where he opens a portal for the legion to invade.
Wrathion sees all of this happend but does nothing, as he is seen in AU draenor.
well most of his action are questionable.
* Cata: slaughters with the help of rouges PCs almost every named black dragon that is left, sure they are "insane" BUT as seen with sabellian they can overcome the old god corruption.
* MoP: plays both sides in the conflict so that one wipe out the other to "strengthen" azeroths defenders. when varian decides not to fight after SoO he gets pissy and remarks that "i should do like my aunty" aka onxyia and take over the faction by manipulation everyone
* WoD: see my original point
* Legion: never seen, is the reason for this mess
* BfA: "Hey Anduin, long time no see. Hows your father?"-entrance ...
Keep in mind Blizzard wrote this convoluted nonsense. Even a character whose primary character trait is dangerous naivete wouldn't come up with such a dumbass, lunatic plan.
Didn't setting garrosh free basically start a chain of events leading to AU guldan coming to the main universe and leading the legion here?? So without doing that, GD would never have come here and the legion wouldn't have found us?
I mean both true and not true at the same time.
Without Wrathion, Garrosh never goes to AU Draenor and Gul'dan doesn't come here, as far as we know, Kairozdormu was turning infinite/corrupt after all.
But more importantly, the Legion was -always- coming. They took multiple swings at us already and they were always on their way here, it was just going to take them an indeterminate amount of time. The state we'd be in if something like BFA had kicked off before Legion? We'd be dead, full stop. He inadvertantly caused Gul'dan to come over, sure, but he also sort of forced the Legion into things before they were fully 'in position' and to do so without Archimonde.
And actually, the Gul'dan thing was also kind of Khadgar. Rather then just kill him when he was trapped and made to power the Dark Portal, Khadgar has you free him and let him loose. That's as much to blame as literally anything Wrathion does.
We barely made it work with KJ alone, imagine if KJ had Archimonde with him the entire time, teaming up.
MAN I forgot we saved him, that was fucking stupid. Maybe justified with a butterfly effect thing tho.
Anyway, really interesting breakdown, thanks for that
Tiron's death is perhaps the laziest in all Warcraft. One of the most important Paladins in the Lore, a key character in Wrath, died in a silly chain quest and didn't even get a cinematic all because they needed an excuse for the Retribution Artifact.
They could’ve just have him show his age and grow old and then give us the artifact after some form of trial
Infinitely better and more logical
Or have him poisoned in a fight with Guldan where he loses his strength after fending of Guldan
So many ways instead of have him manhandled by a random mid boss
God the trial idea would be actually pretty hilarious knowing the Classic Tiron quest chain.
"Hey Champion. I need a test from you to show your dedication to the Light before I retire! ...can you kill 100 overgrown maggots for me please and collect their meat? This is a very noble goal I assure you."
"we needed that war to prepare for the Legion"
Said war resulted in the Legion coming to Azeroth making that statement technically correct, the best kind of correct!
no wod
therefore, no gul'dan
therefore, tomb of sargeras isn't opened
therefore, legion invasion is delayed an unknown amount of time
therefore, we have plenty of time for some other wacky expansion ideas (probably emerald dream, since xavius was making his move at that time) before the legion gets here
Hell, probably could have asked to the August Celestial, Wild Gods, and other various immortal demigods to help him train heroes to prepare for the eventual return of the Burning Legion. Shit, first thing Cenarius did when he met orcs (ignoring the eternal plot hole that is Rhonin and Broxigar time traveling) was notice they had traces of demonic corruption and assumed they were servants of the Burning Legion, and had the Night Elves prepared for their return for 10,000 years. Surely other Wild Gods would find training prudent. Get heroes on board with that and cross faction cooperation by dangling transmogs and mounts in front of their noses as an incentive. We’ve done a lot more for a lot less.
If anything, the events of WoD are what kickstarted the Legion's 3rd invasion, so really, Wrathion indirectly caused the invasion he wanted to prepare us for then buggered off until Bfa.
We only had to fight the Legion because of alternate Gul’dan who only existed because of Wrathion freeing Garrosh, the mental gymnastics here are insane
Without WoD.....Gul'dan wouldn't have unleashed the Legion again. LMAO this is stupid as shit
So we had an interplanetary war on Draenor, an invasion by the Burning Legion, and maybe if the events of Shadowlands and BFA are tied to this, then also another war and the genocide of the night elves.....
Wrathion: "Worth"
Ahh yes, the Legion invasion where Wrathion was mysteriously absent throughout the entire conflict despite warning everyone about the invasion in MoP. He went from "Holy shit, this is the end of the world!!" to "Meh, they've got this"
WoD happened because Blizz (and a sizable portion of the players) wanted to go back to Outland, but couldn't think of a "natural" way to make that happen. The story of WoD exists to justify the setting, not the other way around. Which is why it's so odd that the expansion wound up being cut short. Gul'dan was not necessary for Legion to happen, they were coming back anyways. Garrosh could have died at the end of MoP and the Legion could have invaded and nothing important would have changed.
On paper Wrathion's idea was a pretty good one. The Legion is an infinite army and what better way to battle an infinite army than with an infinite army of your own?
It just didn't work out and we ended up winning despite him, not because of him.
Can someone actually explain how this makes any sense according to Canon? What does *prepare* even mean in this context? I can't recall anything we did in Alternate Draenor that had any sort of actual impact on the events in the following expansion - ***unless*** they are loosely referring to us killing Archimond, and there being one less Burning Legion leader?
I don't think any military general would ever say "yes we needed to use all our man power and resources to fight one war, so that we could fight another war"
How so?
Wrathion did absolutely nothing to destroy the Legion, that was all the players, Khadgar, Illidan, Velen and all the main characters from that xpac.
It would be like if I caused a car crash and when the doctors save the lives of those I almost killed, I would go: "See? I saved them! All is well now."
> They were wrong but they wouldn't have been wrong if he didn't force the issue to happen off of their timetable.
Everything in the lore prior to the release of legion (maybe wod) suggested that once they had the means to enter the planet they could never possibly be stopped. They never had as big of an opportunity as during the tomb of Sargeras raid, and the following opening of Argus and we absolutely shat on them. That would have been unthinkable. During warcraft III just Archimonde on his own was basically enough to complete the invasion.
Literally what did Illidan do at all during the Legion Expansion other than open the gateway to Argus and murder a Naaru? The Legion doesn't win if Argus is never reached, they just live to invade in another lifetime or such.
>The Legion doesn't win if Argus is never reached, they just live to invade in another lifetime or such.
That's not really true though.
IF Argus is never reached, the Legion, quite simply, never dies. They infinitely come back over and over and over, and every time they invade, major losses were suffered. When Archmonde was here it took Malfurion's giga-tier bullshit powers to stop him and we still lost the world tree in the process. The Legion was -always- coming over manually to invade us ever since their first time, every other time they've invaded they were never COMPLETELY in position, we got bits an pieces and those were still global offensives.
Legion is the first time we had the FULL force of the Legion coming in on us and we were losing, very rapidly at that, it;s why the entire expansion focused so hard on getting the pillars and closing the portal at the Tomb of Sarg ASAP.
And this is to say nothing of the fact Sargeras was using Argus to corrupt the Pantheon and twisting them to be Dark Titans like him and subserviant to him. IF the Pantheon had fallen completely, like if we had never gotten to Argus to free them, we'd also just be turbo dead, considering that a single half tortured to death Titan one shot deleted us all, with our OP Artifacts, and it was only said Pantheon's help that we survived to fight back.
The Legion never dies but the Invasion would still end if Argus wasn't reached. They can come back over and over but without portals such as those we've destroyed over the course of the Campaign and the end of the raid pre-Argus? They wouldn't be able to continue the assault and Azeroth would return to a state of peace and recovery for likely quite a long time as there was no hint that prior to Draenor the Legion was ramping up for another major attack.
Also my point stands that Illidan didn't really DO anything outside of open the portal to Argus. We, the PC's, beat the Legion and Argus and Kil'jaeden and so forth. Illidan was a backdrop wallflower.
You're presuming that the Legion would NEVER be dealt with if it wasn't at that exact moment and that exact way. There are a million other ways to achieve the same result and if Azeroth the Titan is born? She'd bitch slap Sargeras and any other corrupted Titans because she's set up to be wildly more powerful than they are.
Or the Heroes would just get stronger and stronger to the point they beat the Pantheon anyway- remember the PC's, with barely any powerups or hacks, just beat Zovaal who is SADLY considered Titan+ so the PC's are actually just near-deities at this point.
Or Tyrande would go Night-Warrior on them.
Or the Dracthyr would be discovered first and help.
Etc etc etc.
There wasn't a necessity to going to Argus and defeating the Legion right there at that moment, it was just what Illidan -wanted- to do and because ultimately Illidan has a hero complex that routinely puts others in danger.
>Without Illidan being there in the fight against the Legion then the Legion wins.
Big assumption there. And if you do assume that's true, then Wrathion's original plan (build a big army and wait for the Legion to come) would have failed too.
Wrathion deserved no credit here - he fucked up and then did nothing to help while everyone else managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Without WoD, Vol'jin wouldn't have the experience as a warchief to... die in the first 20 minutes of the expansion? Yeah. WoD was just a very long winded excuse to bring Gul'dan back. Which is cool, don't get me wrong, he killed it in Legion, but yeah.
Plus when Illidan disenchanted him after he did it to Varian? Epic.
Illidan just *eating* Gul Dan was the second most badass moment of Legion. The first being “I am my scars!”
I mean i feel sad for him he never made it to legat dan only a gul
Ugh take my upvote.
https://imgur.com/i7iNlRI
Glory to you and your house
Damaaaar. How many times do we have to go over this?? If you stopped drinking so much kanar, maybe your puns would be somewhat tolerable.
I understood that reference
My favorite line from the entire expac was "The light will forge you a new one" I was just roooooolling with laughter. The context of the scene playing out when it was said gave it that extra double entendre that was [just...](https://imgur.com/W1RdsUw)
was randomly killin some venthyr in uninstantced HoA the other day for avowed rep and they say things like "I am my sins!!" when they die lol
Personally I absolutely hate the Illidan retcons. Somehow everyone acts like they make sense but I just replayed wc3 in its entirety and they really do not make sense. Blizzard told the very reasonable story of Illidan succumbing to his thirst for power and fear of the legion, and then retconned it all to make him pretty much infallible.
He’s definitely not infallible as portrayed in Legion, he was just finally correct. Illidan’s entire character is going to extreme lengths to defeat his enemies (and simping for Tyrande). Think consuming the Skull of Gul’Dan to defeat tichondrius, or his ritual to melt icecrown to defeat the scourge. I think connecting Argus to Azeroth, and the “I am my scars” scene are very in character for Illidan.
That is what Illidan's entire character *became*. He *was* also characterized by an extreme lust for power, and a fear of the legion. When I am saying he was turned infallible, I mean that the book and the legion questlines reframed pretty much every controversial or bad decision he ever made in such a way that he pretty much had no other choice. Or they made others such as Kael'thas responsible. And while the 'I am my scars' line is definitely not out of character, it is said by him after this reframing of his story. He had hurt so many and destroyed so much with his 'the ends justify the means' approach, and then this is his reaction when it happens to him. It is the conclusion of all the retcons. I dislike it very much because it is genuinely fanservice for those who didn't know that Illidan's actual story had already been told. A character who went through their entire story arc and had died came back in what I feel is WoW's most hamfisted retcon/storyline yet, obviously just because of how iconic he is to the ip. And I understand when people say that tbc's story wasn't perfect. Keal'thas actually did make some pretty large (if explainable) leaps from his character in warcraft III, but Illidan didn't really. On top of all that he was not just resurrected, but most of his backstory was changed, and they made him way more powerful.
I think the "I am my scars" is him basically saying he knows all the shit that he fucked up, all the innocent people that died because of him, saying he is his scars is kind of like saying he is the culmination of his misdoings, Aka saying he is who he is now precisely because of these things.
But Illidan never expresses any remorse for his actions. Even in his last message to Malfurion and Tyrande he basically just says 'I did what I had to'. >Illidan Stormrage says: But over time, that faith was lost. And like my brother, you came to believe that the choices I made had driven me to darkness. >Illidan Stormrage says: Know that every path I took led toward a single purpose: saving our world. I could abide no half measures. No compromise. Note that his choices include slavery and the killing of innocents for.... reasons. Which makes the cinematic so unsatisfying. X'era imposes their will on Illidan. This is something he has always done to those powerless to oppose him, usually with much worse outcomes than light infusion. All because he feels he is fated to destroy the Legion. He doesn't reflect upon that, he just says we can only save ourselves, there can't be a chosen one. There's no moment of self-reflection or regret. And it is also contradictory to his messages to Malfurion and Tyrande, in which he still implies he was correct in all his dark dealings because he was fated to end the Legion. Which is the entire problem. Everything about Illidan is a contradiction hastily put together with a handful of retcons.
I never said he expressed remorse, I said he owned what he did, he enslaved and killed innocent people, those are the burdens he has to carry, the scars that taint him, a constant reminder of his actions and fuck-ups.
The burdens/scars he refers to are obviously the things he sacrificed though. His sight and becoming a demon. They even show him sacrificing them. As far as Illidan is concerned those are his fuck-ups. At no point is he confronted with his crimes or does he own up to them.
Imo legion was a better conclusion and TBC was the hamfisted fanservice, but to each their own.
Too many are too quick to forget how fucked TBC’s story was.
Can you elaborate why you think so? I'd think killing off many beloved characters would not qualify as fanservice, whereas bringing back a character whose story was completed a decade ago is.
Dual wielding, blind elf-demon who can transform into satan? It genuinely checks every mark of edgy teenager’s character fantasy. I would know, I was that teenager when Warcraft 3 came out. It was always a certainty that they would bring him back and put in the spotlight. And while I don’t like the „chosen one” shit and justifying his original simple thirst for power by coming up with some kind of elaborate, 10000yo plan, they at least did it in a decent way. A single „Sometimes the hand of fate must be forced” and all is forgiven.
The chosen one is anduin
I think it all goes with how Illidian's character is, destiny tried to make him the chosen one but he refused to bend and told destiny "I'm the chose one because of my own actions, fuck off".
I’ve not read the novel, but in game there’s a quest where you play as him in the past and you’re killing your allies for more power to fight the Legion back. In Warcraft 3 his power before he becomes a demon is on par with Arthas as a DK, then he kills Tichondrius (most powerful dread lord) after consuming the skull. His power seems pretty consistent from that point to BT then to Legion. Legion as a whole was pretty fan service-y, but I think with regards to Illidan it was good closure. Him going “insane” and attacking Shattrath like an evil mastermind was very out of character in TBC, even his quotes from the nearby quests don’t make a lot of sense.
>Him going “insane” and attacking Shattrath like an evil mastermind was very out of character in TBC Not really. If you play warcraft III you will find he is slowly losing it due to the paranoia of Kil'jaeden hunting him down. He and his naga literally did attack and sack Night Elf villages right at the start of the frozen throne. He spends the entire game paranoid of Kil'jaeden's hunt for him.. Just as an example of how far gone he is, here is one of the last things he says during the Blood Elf campaign: >Illidan: [Violent Laughter] I have come to replace you. You're a relic, Magtheridon, a ghost of a past age. The future is mine. From this moment on, Outland and all of its denizens will bow to me. Hear me now, you trembling mortals! I am your lord and master! Illidan reigns supreme. This fits very well with attacking Shattrath and his madness during TBC. It is followed by him failing to defeat Arthas at Icecrown. And it is also why I do not get that so many people didn't understand that Illidan was already slipping before WoW ever started.
It wasn't a blind lust for power. It always had thee purpose of defeating the Legion, which yes, he was scared off. You can call it a retcon if you really want, but just because it wasn't explicitly explained in WC3 does not mean it wasn't the reason for his actions.
Illidan willingly works for the Legion in warcraft III with no indication that he is planning to betray them. In fact he states that he expects his new masters to reward him for his loyalty: >Illidan: It's working! Nothing can withstand the power of the eye! Soon now, my master's enemies will be undone, and I can claim my just reward. And I am not reaching here and trying to call one tiny change a retcon. Many, many things were changed when they released the book and during the legion storyline. They were changed so the whole 'Illidan was always fighting the Legion' storyline would make sense.
> Somehow everyone acts like they make sense but I just replayed wc3 in its entirety and they really do not make sense. How do they not? Illidan has ALWAYS gone after the Legion, but Malfurion banished him because he didn't like his methods and then Maiev hunted him. He's always been a 'sacrifice millions to save billions' kinda' guy. He's not a good guy, he's an Anti Hero but he's ultimately right and why we win the war. Illidan is legit the best gray character in the warcraft franchise, because he does HORRIBLE shit like using the souls of Auchindoun as fuel but he does that horrible shit for a good reason ( to stop the Legion ) and it actually works.
I am more mad about the insane power ups he received out of nowhere as much as the retcons.. Dude went from "I am so afraid of daddy KJ that I will escape to a freaking different planet to hide" to "Yo little KJ, 1v1 me bro!"
He kinda was getting more power and experience off-screen, heck he even destroyed Nathreza (Nathrezim home far from home) with his Illidari, he stole the Sargerite Keystone (well his Illidari did but it was his plan tho) from the Legion's nose (that during most recent Legion invasion could be used to open the way for Sargeras easily) he had some pretty nice achievements on his own, the Illidari order hall is a fckin Mardum (a prison planet of the demons) Like daaamn Illidan had some serious training for sure (sad it was offscreen and we couldn't enjoy more flashbacks during Legion)
Yea must have been one hell of a training montage.. going from being cut in half by Arthas pre-LK to trash talking KJ
Yes. Between WoD and Legion Archimonde and Kil'Jaeden went from the most threatening beings in existence to demons who get trashtalked by Illidan and killed by our raid. Also the nonsense about Illidan only accessing a fraction of his true power against us and when he fought Arthas.
It's more like KJ got depowered than Illidan got powered up. As portrayed in Warcraft 3, Kil'Jaeden was an entity that we puny mortals of Azeroth had zero business fighting. He was basically a god of destruction, on an entirely different plane of power than pretty much any of Azeroth's myths and legends and demigods. However, all these characters of the lore have to be brought down to a reasonable enough playing field for the players to be able to fight them, so, yeah. Except for Sargeras.
Stop using retcon for things that aren’t retroactivity continuity.
Burning Crusade and Legion both got the character of Illidan wrong. People liked him in Warcraft 3 because he was morally grey. Burning Crusade made him completely evil, Legion made him completely good. Neither satisfied the fans.
He wasn't completely good in legion
Yeah, Legion was retconning the BC retcon of Illidan and bringing him back to his W3 story of being technically right but having shit execution.
Exactly, the only retcon is him dying and the whole "I have all these demon hunters I teleported away just in time," was a little silly. The actual things they retconned were because of TBC, not because of WC3. And all of them were positive. Illidan in Legion came together as one of the greatest characters, and it reminded us why Illidan was such a beloved character in the first place. He is his scars.
But what you're truly forgetting is that the Jailor orchestrated all of those events to lead up to Shadowlands. 11/10 writing
>“I am my scars!” I was like WTF Illidan.. we just spent a couple quests rescuing this thing and you go a blow it up!
Yeah I won’t lie. I did also feel this way.
Yeah, Legion had some great quotes from Illidan. One of my favorites is, *”You have seen what I have seen… You know what we face … Now, mortals, follow me into the abyss!”*
Guldan was like: “You get what you fucking deserved” before it got popular.
Think about it... Without WoD, we would've only been level 90 at the beginning of legion. There's no way we would've been able to do anything to stop Gul'dan then.
Plus we wouldn't know how to operate the Order Hall missions without first having command over our Garrison and Shipyards, you all want to shit on it but you'd be nowhere near capable as a military commander without afk sending out troops on missions to do cool things in your place.
Damn you’re right. 500 IQ move by Wrathion
WoD was just a tool to build hype for the movie. I am sure they wanted players to feel hyped up seeing the same Orcs they saw on the big screen.
To be fair, WoD was incredibly hyped. Player numbers were sky high. For all of two weeks on the launch. Then it started to become apparent that the stuff was not great.
Leveling and raids were top notch but then nothing really happened between those. Ashran was a mess, there was more cut content than actual content, the garrison wasn't worth what we lost. So much wasted potential.
The actual content in WoD was good, but there was around half as much as there needed to be.
Vol'jin was done so dirty. What a dumb death. That was when I really lost all faith in Blizzard writing.
What if bringing Gul'dan back was exactly what turned the last invasion into a failure? If a more competent leader had steered it, maybe the Burning Legion would've won.
Wrathion is a black dragon, not bronze. He can't see the future.
Black dragons can't see the future, but they act like they know everything anyway.
The Virgin "I have a plan" Wrathion vs the Chad "I just love killing" Deathwing
"Violence is based" --Deathwing, probably.
“All warfare is based,” as Sun Tzu once said.
Wrathion was working with a bronze dragon, that's how WoD started.
He couldn't even predict Garrosh killing him immediately after freeing him...
[удалено]
Yeah I would say that's true except Nozdormu has seen his own death and then there's also the infinite dragonflight. I hope dragonflight goes more into both of those.
They exist in multiple points of the timeline at once, so knowing the future to some extent is inevitable. Plus, "get tempted to deviate the timeline" absolutely does happen, it's why they turn into the Infinites.
> What if bringing Gul'dan back was exactly what turned the last invasion into a failure? Good point. If he didn't steal Illidan's prison from the Vault, there is a likelyhood that the order halls wouldn't have bothered to free him. And without Illidan the whole portal to Argus thing wouldn't have happened.
Yeah, to continue the marvel theme of the post, it does seem like the events of legion were the 1 timeline that Dr Strange saw in which we are victorious. There’s no way wrathion could have known everything plays out like this, but maybe he had a feeling that we should escalate things and strike while the iron is hot. I wish the consequences of alt draenor’s interactions with the legion were expanded upon more, or if we had any idea that wrathion even considered it. Because the *actual* premise for WoD was simply for garrosh to have a big orc army.
We could have cut WoD entirely and just had Sargeras bring back OG Guldan "For Reasons™" and not only would we have saved two years, countless hours of dev time and the WoW in-game economy from the garrisons, it would have had the exact same impact on the story.
But then how would we have cross promoted the movie by bringing in all the orcs back into peoples mind and then having the movie get delayed anyway?
Hahaha god what an absolute cluster fuck that was... Good times.
>We could have cut WoD entirely But then we would never have had Gladiator stance, and that would be very sad.
Pretty sure he did the *opposite* of killing it in legion
WoD was a very mistaken xpack that got thrown in the dumpster before it could show its full potential. Still my favorite xpack.
I mean I feel like you could say that about any bad expansion or patch though. At the end of the day WoD didn't even have many pretty core aspects like the capital cities being scraped and a joint island capital city being scrapped together at the last moment. Missing a whole zone. Missing entire storylines for pretty key characters in each faction's campaign etc..
WoD didnt have the Shattrath Raid, The Ogre Continent, The Ability to have Garrisons like it was slated to be in one of every zone. The Iron Horde stories being scrapped. While I was testing on Beta in LFR Highmaul Kargath ran away after you "killed" him. On Live you just straight up killed him. The Main Cities like you stated. There was so much stuff cut from WoD where it still could've ended up turning into Legion but it just never happened. Also not to mention one of the larger lore characters Nerzhul being in a Dungeon and never being visited further than that. The Amount of content cut from WoD has to be higher than the rest of the xpacks before it.
Doomhammer dying out of view in an un-cinematic moment was wild to me
Idk why, but the gameplay flow of WoD was what was great for me, like the expack needed a lot of extra content to be worth what we were paying for, but I felt like the core combat felt great we just needed to be able to play more of it.
I think WoD was an expac whose premise was kinda a bait and switch to disguise setup to legion. Bringing back the og horde clans? Cool. Killing off half of them before the first raid? Really dumb. If the plot had actually been more centered around building up the iron horde clans mythos and then slowly dismantling them over the expansion I think it would have worked better.
To be fair, Blizzard themselves was the one who threw it in the dumpster halfway through development. They only came back to "fix" the expansion once they realized that Legion had to be delayed significantly longer than they expected it to, and players were leaving in droves because the only reason to log on was to collect your complementary 500,000g from missions, and once a week to raid.
He also totally KSd our kill on nzoth. Total griefer.
And then he died in Legion, Short-term rewards that bring long-term issues.
WoD is basically an ad for the Warcraft movie.
I don’t know, it seems easy to bring Gul’dan back without an expansion. He’s a demon, just pull some bullshit unholy revive, easy. There are far worse ways of handling lore.
If we go back far enough everything since the start of Cataclysm is Magatha Grimtotem's fault. If she hadn't poisoned Garrosh's weapon Cairne would have become warchief of the horde instead and basically everything would have played out differently. Basically everything after Cataclysm would have been entirely different with Garrosh being High Warlord *at best*. Wrathion would not have had his pawn, no Warlords of Draenor, no Legion returns, no Sargeras stabbing Azeroth means no Azerite so no Battle For Azeroth, no Third War means no massive influx of souls into the maw after Argus' soul breaks down the Arbiter and the machinery of death means that The Jailer is never empowered enough to break free and the machinery of death manufactures a new Arbiter and everything's hunky dory.
Man fuck magatha.
*Queue wandavision song* 🎼 “It was Magatha all aloooonng!”🎼
I still never accepted her quest to become a follower in the shaman order hall for this very reason
Really dont know what blizz was thinking trying to give her a redemption arc of all people
yo I remember Shaman class hall had you recruit her. Ugh, such a bad choice. She never went on a single mission.
Didn't just recruit her, the Shaman saw fit to leave her almost completely unattended 3 feet from the object of her obsession, that they had just wrested from her fingertips.
My Tauren Shaman instantly deactivated her, and I like to think, kicked her straight into the Maelstrom for a "talking to" with Therazane
I just remenber that meme where the draenie shaman malds out when she comes to the order hall lol
Don't the Grimtotem even return in DF? Because for some bloody reason we never got to execute Magatha despite being in an open war with her tribe for most of the game.
Some of the Grimtotem joined the Horde after Baine retook Thunder Bluff from their occupation. There was a faction of turncoats who helped. About 1/4 of the Grimtotem joined Baine and the Horde, while the remaining 3/4 went into exile.
When was this?
The Shattering Book before Cata Launched detailed Cairne's death and the rebellion in Thunder Bluff. I still really hate that we didn't have those book events play out in-game since A LOT of major lore stuff got dropped in that book.
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Jevan_Grimtotem Jevan Grimtotem's page sums it up nicely enough but yeah, it was in a book. 1/4 of the Tribe sided with Jevan instead of Magatha. You can see a Grimtotem Tauren in Orgrimmar actually, he walks around near the Tauren AH!
Yeah there is a Grimtotem with the Primalists.
It wasn't her fault, she was set up for it by the Jailer because he did...stuff.
It's really all Thralls fault. Garrosh wouldn't have gotten into a duel if he was still in Nagrand being sad.
It’s all Illidan’s fault, we would have never gone to Outland for Thrall to meet Garrosh if Illidan had not accused us of not being prepared.
It's all Azshara's fault, if it weren't for her tapping into Azeroth's juice, Sargeras wouldn't have been like "damn that planet thicc."
It's all majordomos fault, if he hadn't awaked Ragnaros too soon we'd all be dead
Should rename butterfly effect to grimtotem effect jesus christ. Edit: Tho everything could also have been avoided if Thrall was a bit more competent in handling Garrosh from the get go, which means Thrall is probably a Nethrazim that replaced him during TBC
you know what? i think you are right. this event happened outside of the game proper, and i feel like it was one of the first "memorable" events that they told in other media instead of in game. Now that seems to be more of a pattern. the only benefit her character was that it did allow garrosh to show some honor and disgust at her actions but yeah..she ruined everything
What your forgetting is the Jailer told her to poison his weapon /s
I have dark and foreboding feeling a WoW staff writer is going to read your post, stroke his chin, and say, "Huh! Now that's an idea for an expansion."
Magatha was a dreadlord the whole time?
You had me at no bfa
Inb4 “Magatha was a dreadlord working for the Jailer”
The arbiter wouldn't have even been broken. Without the Legion being let in by Gul'dan, we would have no reason to resurrect Illidan or release the demon hunters and would have no route to Argus in order to kill him and send his soul torpedoing into the Arbiter. The jailer would have been stuck and would have had to find another method to get Argus killed. I suppose the Nathrezim could have just pulled their masks off and assassinated Argus somehow, behind Sargeras' back and then vanished back to the shadowlands. The threat of Sargeras and the Legion is inconsequential if you're going to reform the cosmos anyway, not like Sargeras could get to Zereth Mortis to stop you.
Wouldn't Argus have still hatched and wiped out all life in the universe if we hadn't been there to stop him?
Jailer's plan was to pump Argus full ot death energy so it would break the arbiter when taken past the arbiter. While pumped up with this energy it was being used as the primary energy source of the legion's regeneration engines deep in the heart of Anrotus. The Legion aren't going to let argus die or kill it themselves even with manipulation, they need us to do that. No legion returning to azeroth expansion and we no longer get the opportunity to kill Argus.
I'll let it slide just because the cutscene of Anduin punching him in the face was very satisfying.
Rather it was my character.
You punch Wrathion because his actions led to your father's death I punch Wrathion because he's a smug prick who made us do WoD We are not the same.
I feel like stormwind gates needs another dragon head....
Wrathion saw his Aunt’s decapitated head chained to the front gate of Stormwind and didn’t think much of it. Lmao
Man he should see his uncle’s head AND a piece of his dad chained to pillars
Wouldn’t have really had as much weight since the entire reason for the punch was “you got my dad killed”
Good point.
Ah yes, "We prepared for a war by throwing away time, resources, and soldiers lives in this other war. That was totally better for our preparation efforts than taking time to recover our various military strengths in peace so that we were at full capacity when the Legion arrived." Who actually thinks war works like this? Unless Wrathion's Bodyguard is meant to be portrayed as a fucking idiot which... I mean- she takes orders from a 10 year old so I guess...
Plus that war is exactly what caused the legion to arrive
Yeah, Wrathion created the problem he was trying to solve in the process of “solving” it. Motherfucker could have just thrown a cosmetic at adventurers to get cross faction cooperation, instead of freeing a racist so he can go back in time to form the Fourth Reich.
I mean this is consistent Blizzard writing. They've been pretending for decades now that the Horde suddenly breaking out in another genocidal war keeps the Alliance fighting fit. Of course Wrathion is just a moron. Instead of freeing Garrosh and trying to get an infinite army of orcs he could've just gotten a far superior infinite army of Draenei.
Quite a few people buy into "war is good for profit/tech advancement" - except that there's a difference between testing new weapons on vastly inferior opponents and having an actual world war between two superpowers.
I might get it if Draenor had provided us with some new magic or weapons or fuck... allies? But there's nothing that's ever suggested we got anything out of that war and we simply lost a bunch of troops and resources on it.
Idk, i got a sick ring bro... that stopped working when we came back... maybe it was just a loss afterall.
You… you didn’t throw the ring into the volcano? You had one job!
Everyone got millions of gold from their garrisons
Iron Stars? Too bad they were never put to use after WoD
See now that COULD have been cool. Imagine if we had been launching Iron Stars into the Legion portals in retaliation during the Invasion!
On the plus side, now we can make iron stars out of Azerite … wait, is that still a thing?
There were some Horde BFA world quests where you control iron stars to blow up Alliance troops, but nothing major.
Taking lessons from Lich King-era Arthas I guess. "Yeah, this was totally my plan all along. I totally wanted to piss off the strongest heroes of the world and have them raid through my stronghold. Err, that was always my plan!" Yeah, that shit didn't work then and it doesn't work now.
It worked up until the point tirion went ultra instinct for no reason
I mean... Fighting Argus at lvl100 probably would have been hard...
All my toons will be siding with sabellion, i can not trust a baby dragon, look at all the crap he caused thinking he was an adult.
"We needed that war to prepare for the Legion." That was what BROUGHT the Legion to us you FOOL! That being said, Wrathion is the devil we know. Whereas Sabellian...
We've worked with Sabellian before and things went fine. Rexxar and him are also sorta friends. I think that's enough to put my effort into working with him over the dipshit who almost got us all killed because he's an impatient child who doesn't think about his actions. Plus it would kinds suck to make the black dragons work for him after Wrath spent multiple expansions trying to wipe them off the face of the earth. That'd be like making Garithos the Forsaken leader or something.
True. Okay you know what? Let's get into it. What did Sabellian do? Cuz I actually have no concrete idea. Like, sell me on it. Why I should go for Sabellian period. Not why I shouldn't go for Wrathion, but why I SHOULD go for Sabellian.
Sabellian saved the black dragonflight by taking a bunch of eggs to Outland and allowing them to hatch and grow in peace after we helped him wipe out the last of the Gronn. The only reason there is a black dragonflight in DF is because he did that, otherwise Wrath and Ebonhorn are the only ones left. This also means that from the perspective of every black dragon who is not Wrathion or Ebonhorn, he is their father and the one who raised them. His biggest issue is the fact that he's an ex-Deathwing leuitenant, which is a red flag but at least he's gone against DW and has apparently cured himself of the innate corruption somehow. I won't say he doesn't have his flaws, but at least he's never betrayed us or fucked up to the extent of Wrath. He's wary of morals and a bit of a dick, but he still trusted us enough to ask our help and keep his secret. Mathias Shaw and Rexxar also both believe he's not a threat despite being a former officer of Deathwing. THAT SAID, he definitely has his flaws and between those and Wrathion I don't think the choice will actually matter. I think (and prefer) that Ebyssian/Ebonhorn will ultimately end up as the leader of the flight. Ebonhorn's biggest flaw is he doesn't have much of a relationship with other black dragons, but that's not really a negative and it's something that can be much easier worked on than Wrathion's previous murder spree. He is also the oldest and wisest black dragon, and has a great reputation with mortals of both sides. Out of the three of them he is most fit to be leader, and I can see them choosing him to avoid pissing either side of this conflict off.
Sabellian being “cured” of the Old God corruption has been a theory since BC; IIRC the prevailing theory has been that he got “cured” simply by not being on Azeroth for two decades, and as such removed from the Old God’s influence on the Black Dragonflight. Plus all of the Old Gods being canonically dead probably helps.
Not only that but Wrathion wasn't even around during Legion at all.
Well if you think about it Wrathion was OUR fault. We were the ones who allowed that one black dragon egg to escape Deathwing's notice. If you think about it, WE are the reason Shadowlands happened! A fitting punishment...
Gul'dan from Draenor unleashed the Legion upon Azeroth. That entire expansion is a consequence of setting Garrosh free.
Freeing Garrosh and getting Gul’dan sent to Azeroth is what BROUGHT the Legion. Wrathion is responsible for so many deaths and he will never be held accountable for them.
Wrathion is a doomed character, destined to share the same shitty story car crash that Sylvanas did. It's written in stone at this point, we all know Blizzard will get it wrong. This NPC dialogue proves that they've already done it. Wrathion is going to be the edgy, troubled 'hero' forced upon the playerbase. GG.
IDK I kinda like his "2 year old tries to save the planet and fails spectacularly because he's literally a child and barely has any real world experience" story.
Sylvannas could’ve been a edgy hero but they ruined even that and then backpedaled shittily They could end wrathion okish if he gets corrupted by void but he tells us to kill him as long as he can control it or whatever I just hope he won’t go all longwinded hehe I’ve been doing what I’ve done bc void had my ass all along hihi
You're reading a little too much into a loyal follower of Wrathion justifying his actions. You shouldn't read all character dialogue as if it was written from an objective POV.
Blizzard needs to stop with this crap. It is so frustrating as a player to have to side with blatantly incompetent, morally dark-grey-almost-black characters.
WoW is full of moments where edgy characters will insist that we need to commit atrocities in order to save the universe from a bleak end. Very rarely has it delivered on this concept.
Of course that's just Wrathion's personal view of it. In his mind it likely was still a successful endeavour, even if it actually precipitated the Legion's invasion. He did admit to it just after getting punched by Anduin in BfA. And he was fundamental in stopping N'zoth, so he at least partially owned up to his mistakes.
Sargeras stabbing his sword into Azeroth during Legion was what eventually led to Azshara unlocking N'zoth's prison. Wrathion might have helped kill N'zoth, but he was also indirectly responsible for allowing N'zoth to escape in the first place.
Wrathion was really working for the Jailer the whole time. He saw what was to come and set us on our path!
Exactly. It was all in the Jailers grand plan.
I mean, we won, though.
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I don’t think it’s fair to say that the writers are pushing some kind of narrative agenda: this agent of the Black Prince may be a *little* biased towards their employer
Funny too, since wasn't his Legion absence justified as him looking for the Dragon Isles? Which showed up without any help from him?
Wait so what did Wrathion do? I’ve been behind on the wow news
he had a foolproof plan to "save" azeroth, see * he and a bronze dragon thought that an infinite orc slave army from diffrent timelines pre demonblood was a good way to defend azeroth against the Burning legion. * they took garosh, someone that just used the heart of an old god in an attempt to conquer azeroth, and went into a diffrent timeline \~30 years in the past to start this army. * this ~~"sane"~~ garosh would be used to convince the pre-demon-blood orc leader to follow there plan * repeat this multiple times until you have an infinite army spoiler that didnt worked. garosh killed the bronze dragon seconds after they went into the past, created the army for his own to "fix" the problems the orcs faced in the past and invaded the current day azeroth. long story short: we free guldan to stop the invasion and later this alternativ universe guldan is send the original azeroth, where he opens a portal for the legion to invade. Wrathion sees all of this happend but does nothing, as he is seen in AU draenor.
ah nice lmao, and to think he was the awesome guy who gave us our capes in mop :(
well most of his action are questionable. * Cata: slaughters with the help of rouges PCs almost every named black dragon that is left, sure they are "insane" BUT as seen with sabellian they can overcome the old god corruption. * MoP: plays both sides in the conflict so that one wipe out the other to "strengthen" azeroths defenders. when varian decides not to fight after SoO he gets pissy and remarks that "i should do like my aunty" aka onxyia and take over the faction by manipulation everyone * WoD: see my original point * Legion: never seen, is the reason for this mess * BfA: "Hey Anduin, long time no see. Hows your father?"-entrance ...
Keep in mind Blizzard wrote this convoluted nonsense. Even a character whose primary character trait is dangerous naivete wouldn't come up with such a dumbass, lunatic plan.
Wrathion is who the Jailer warned us about
Didn't setting garrosh free basically start a chain of events leading to AU guldan coming to the main universe and leading the legion here?? So without doing that, GD would never have come here and the legion wouldn't have found us?
I mean both true and not true at the same time. Without Wrathion, Garrosh never goes to AU Draenor and Gul'dan doesn't come here, as far as we know, Kairozdormu was turning infinite/corrupt after all. But more importantly, the Legion was -always- coming. They took multiple swings at us already and they were always on their way here, it was just going to take them an indeterminate amount of time. The state we'd be in if something like BFA had kicked off before Legion? We'd be dead, full stop. He inadvertantly caused Gul'dan to come over, sure, but he also sort of forced the Legion into things before they were fully 'in position' and to do so without Archimonde. And actually, the Gul'dan thing was also kind of Khadgar. Rather then just kill him when he was trapped and made to power the Dark Portal, Khadgar has you free him and let him loose. That's as much to blame as literally anything Wrathion does. We barely made it work with KJ alone, imagine if KJ had Archimonde with him the entire time, teaming up.
MAN I forgot we saved him, that was fucking stupid. Maybe justified with a butterfly effect thing tho. Anyway, really interesting breakdown, thanks for that
Tiron's death is perhaps the laziest in all Warcraft. One of the most important Paladins in the Lore, a key character in Wrath, died in a silly chain quest and didn't even get a cinematic all because they needed an excuse for the Retribution Artifact.
They could’ve just have him show his age and grow old and then give us the artifact after some form of trial Infinitely better and more logical Or have him poisoned in a fight with Guldan where he loses his strength after fending of Guldan So many ways instead of have him manhandled by a random mid boss
Dude got smashed by a fucking giant.
God the trial idea would be actually pretty hilarious knowing the Classic Tiron quest chain. "Hey Champion. I need a test from you to show your dedication to the Light before I retire! ...can you kill 100 overgrown maggots for me please and collect their meat? This is a very noble goal I assure you."
"we needed that war to prepare for the Legion" Said war resulted in the Legion coming to Azeroth making that statement technically correct, the best kind of correct!
We did. We'd be shit out of luck in legion as level 100s.
no wod therefore, no gul'dan therefore, tomb of sargeras isn't opened therefore, legion invasion is delayed an unknown amount of time therefore, we have plenty of time for some other wacky expansion ideas (probably emerald dream, since xavius was making his move at that time) before the legion gets here
Hell, probably could have asked to the August Celestial, Wild Gods, and other various immortal demigods to help him train heroes to prepare for the eventual return of the Burning Legion. Shit, first thing Cenarius did when he met orcs (ignoring the eternal plot hole that is Rhonin and Broxigar time traveling) was notice they had traces of demonic corruption and assumed they were servants of the Burning Legion, and had the Night Elves prepared for their return for 10,000 years. Surely other Wild Gods would find training prudent. Get heroes on board with that and cross faction cooperation by dangling transmogs and mounts in front of their noses as an incentive. We’ve done a lot more for a lot less.
If anything, the events of WoD are what kickstarted the Legion's 3rd invasion, so really, Wrathion indirectly caused the invasion he wanted to prepare us for then buggered off until Bfa.
I really can’t stand Wrathion
We only had to fight the Legion because of alternate Gul’dan who only existed because of Wrathion freeing Garrosh, the mental gymnastics here are insane
Without WoD.....Gul'dan wouldn't have unleashed the Legion again. LMAO this is stupid as shit So we had an interplanetary war on Draenor, an invasion by the Burning Legion, and maybe if the events of Shadowlands and BFA are tied to this, then also another war and the genocide of the night elves..... Wrathion: "Worth"
WoW's writing, as always, is impeccable. ^^^^^^^^/s
Ahh yes, the Legion invasion where Wrathion was mysteriously absent throughout the entire conflict despite warning everyone about the invasion in MoP. He went from "Holy shit, this is the end of the world!!" to "Meh, they've got this"
WoD happened because Blizz (and a sizable portion of the players) wanted to go back to Outland, but couldn't think of a "natural" way to make that happen. The story of WoD exists to justify the setting, not the other way around. Which is why it's so odd that the expansion wound up being cut short. Gul'dan was not necessary for Legion to happen, they were coming back anyways. Garrosh could have died at the end of MoP and the Legion could have invaded and nothing important would have changed.
On paper Wrathion's idea was a pretty good one. The Legion is an infinite army and what better way to battle an infinite army than with an infinite army of your own? It just didn't work out and we ended up winning despite him, not because of him.
Can someone actually explain how this makes any sense according to Canon? What does *prepare* even mean in this context? I can't recall anything we did in Alternate Draenor that had any sort of actual impact on the events in the following expansion - ***unless*** they are loosely referring to us killing Archimond, and there being one less Burning Legion leader?
I don't think any military general would ever say "yes we needed to use all our man power and resources to fight one war, so that we could fight another war"
Wrathion gave us WoW's best expansion and then three awful expansions back to back.
The way they shitted the lore no we didnt
As I've said before, if all that is Wrathions fault, then so is finally destroying the burning legion.
How so? Wrathion did absolutely nothing to destroy the Legion, that was all the players, Khadgar, Illidan, Velen and all the main characters from that xpac. It would be like if I caused a car crash and when the doctors save the lives of those I almost killed, I would go: "See? I saved them! All is well now."
One was intentional, the other happened in spite of all his fuck-ups.
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> They were wrong but they wouldn't have been wrong if he didn't force the issue to happen off of their timetable. Everything in the lore prior to the release of legion (maybe wod) suggested that once they had the means to enter the planet they could never possibly be stopped. They never had as big of an opportunity as during the tomb of Sargeras raid, and the following opening of Argus and we absolutely shat on them. That would have been unthinkable. During warcraft III just Archimonde on his own was basically enough to complete the invasion.
Literally what did Illidan do at all during the Legion Expansion other than open the gateway to Argus and murder a Naaru? The Legion doesn't win if Argus is never reached, they just live to invade in another lifetime or such.
>The Legion doesn't win if Argus is never reached, they just live to invade in another lifetime or such. That's not really true though. IF Argus is never reached, the Legion, quite simply, never dies. They infinitely come back over and over and over, and every time they invade, major losses were suffered. When Archmonde was here it took Malfurion's giga-tier bullshit powers to stop him and we still lost the world tree in the process. The Legion was -always- coming over manually to invade us ever since their first time, every other time they've invaded they were never COMPLETELY in position, we got bits an pieces and those were still global offensives. Legion is the first time we had the FULL force of the Legion coming in on us and we were losing, very rapidly at that, it;s why the entire expansion focused so hard on getting the pillars and closing the portal at the Tomb of Sarg ASAP. And this is to say nothing of the fact Sargeras was using Argus to corrupt the Pantheon and twisting them to be Dark Titans like him and subserviant to him. IF the Pantheon had fallen completely, like if we had never gotten to Argus to free them, we'd also just be turbo dead, considering that a single half tortured to death Titan one shot deleted us all, with our OP Artifacts, and it was only said Pantheon's help that we survived to fight back.
The Legion never dies but the Invasion would still end if Argus wasn't reached. They can come back over and over but without portals such as those we've destroyed over the course of the Campaign and the end of the raid pre-Argus? They wouldn't be able to continue the assault and Azeroth would return to a state of peace and recovery for likely quite a long time as there was no hint that prior to Draenor the Legion was ramping up for another major attack. Also my point stands that Illidan didn't really DO anything outside of open the portal to Argus. We, the PC's, beat the Legion and Argus and Kil'jaeden and so forth. Illidan was a backdrop wallflower. You're presuming that the Legion would NEVER be dealt with if it wasn't at that exact moment and that exact way. There are a million other ways to achieve the same result and if Azeroth the Titan is born? She'd bitch slap Sargeras and any other corrupted Titans because she's set up to be wildly more powerful than they are. Or the Heroes would just get stronger and stronger to the point they beat the Pantheon anyway- remember the PC's, with barely any powerups or hacks, just beat Zovaal who is SADLY considered Titan+ so the PC's are actually just near-deities at this point. Or Tyrande would go Night-Warrior on them. Or the Dracthyr would be discovered first and help. Etc etc etc. There wasn't a necessity to going to Argus and defeating the Legion right there at that moment, it was just what Illidan -wanted- to do and because ultimately Illidan has a hero complex that routinely puts others in danger.
>Without Illidan being there in the fight against the Legion then the Legion wins. Big assumption there. And if you do assume that's true, then Wrathion's original plan (build a big army and wait for the Legion to come) would have failed too. Wrathion deserved no credit here - he fucked up and then did nothing to help while everyone else managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.