4 years? The plot device was already beaten to death and raised half a dozen times by the time WC III launched. I disliked Arthas from the start just because he was 'yet another good guy going evil', and in a lame way too. Diablo I set the stage and Kerrigan was pretty cool but since then it has been an endless rehash of an idea best used very sparingly.

In the real world yes. However, a fantasy story works much better in black and white (especially if it has you slaughtering endless amounts of creatures, i.e. it is a game) unless the story is very very good. Unfortunately I don't find Blizzard's storytelling good enough to pull of lots of gray. Not saying their story is bad, but their gray is either artificial or annoying to me.

Edit: Let me explain the above a bit further. I've played tabletop roleplaying games for over 15 years. Almost every campaign which is not black and white suffers from one problem: If you're a decent guy and the enemy is any reasonable shade of gray you'll always end up talking yourself out of every problem. That's nice if you're deep into roleplaying, but there is also the game aspect (i.e. combat) which I find fun too. Of course, you can aim for combat yourself, but that'll end up making you feel bad or stupid, and usually both.

Now, I have had one DM who did manage to pull of a campaign with all shades of gray and some good amount of combat. And honestly that was the best campaign I've ever played. But most DM's can't pull it off. So, if you want to have a campaign with a good bit of combat it works better if it's for a good bit black and white, and you can fight the evil guys and feel good.

This problem does exist in WoW as well. In the end WoW is a game and without stuff to fight there is no game. So fight we will. However, pretty much every boss which is some kind of gray (Illidan, Kael'thas, Sartharion, to name a few which have been discussed here) raises the question why we actually attack him. The answer is either some form of 'because he's evil' or, if he's not, we don't come much further than 'because we need shiny epics'. Either way is unsatisfactory in it's own way, however given the choice I rather fight 'because he is evil' than 'because it's fun and I want his stuff', which makes ME evil. I don't escape the real world to be evil. YMMV of course.

Blizzard' worlds have never been defined by black and white or good vs evil. Even Diablo which is essentially the struggle between heaven and hell had shades of gray.

I think the whole good guys and bad guys setup is boring and overly juvenile. Thats why those sorts of plots belong in your saturday morning cartoons (GI Joe).

Personally I find the characters and lore to be very compelling (thats why I bother to read this thread). But I guess we will just have to agree to disagree.

You assume they were good and not just pretending to be good. Let's correlate this to the real world. Did something suddenly happen in 1938 to make Hitler hate Jews? Or did he hate Jews in 1928 too?

And this doesn't always go in one direction.

Look at the relationship between King Juan Carlos and Generalismo Francisco Franco. While being Franco's heir apparent Juan Carlos pretty much went along with all of his policies. After the death of Franco, Juan Carlos began the transition of Spain into a Democracy.

I think it's safe to assume that Blizzard either believes Children are born innately good or tabula rasa and become what their environment leads them to be. Under these circumstances there is no room for someone to be born innately evil. Was Hitler a murderer at age 10? Probably not.

I think it's asking/expecting a bit much to have mortal characters that are just created evil... short of being the spawn of some other great evil.

Put it this way. Find me one prominent historical example of a leader who rose (and that's a keyword) to power without being loved and supported by his people. It's a bit different being a born heir, but I said that earlier.

Well, it took 68 pages for this thing to be Godwin'd. Good job.

Also, it became pretty apparent that Kael'Thas was no longer working for Illidan during the quests in Netherstorm, and with all the Demonic forces in and around the Manaforges, I'm fairly sure we found out that he was working for the Burning Legion during those same quests. Kael may have started with good intentions, but by the time you reached The Eye it was pretty apparent that he needed to be taken out (not necessarily for his connection with Illidan).

The cool thing about EQ and everything being attackable and should die because they have shiny loots is there was consequence to all that. After Planes of Power, when we the player committed hubris and killed all of the gods (sort of) their response was to pull back and leave the mortal races to their own devices. This was the original setting to EQ2 where the world was sundered and the races of Zek were taking over the world.

Now that we the player are killing aspects and messing with the works of the titans I'm hoping to see major consequences to the world because of those actions and that our greed for power (loots) spells the downfall of Azeroth (which we eventually have to fight back against too). It will turn out Malygos and Nozdormu were right in that we the heros need to be kept in check before all hell breaks loose.

The horde did get shafted a bit on the tie in of Naxx. For alliance I thought it was tied in very neatly to the story.

Indeed it does. She came across as this "cheerleader" type who winked to the Jocks about what kind of Jewels she'd like to wear and subsequently went to the Prom with whomever gave her what she wanted, no matter who that was.

Sickening analogy aside, she is to me one of the most disturbing yet also more interesting "villains" just because of this. What are her ultimate motives? We know that Arthas wants to destroy all life on Azeroth. But what does Azshara really want? Sure, she wanted a husband worthy of herself (Sargeras) but apart from that, what did she really want back in the War of the Ancients, and has her motives changed the last ten thousand years?

(Another question is: The Night Elves lost their immortality as the world tree burned (end of Wc3:RoC campaign), did the Naga too?)

While you can dream about Lady Macbeth's history all you want, as far as the story goes she is pretty much evil from the start. We don't ever see her turn "evil". This doesn't make her any less a complex or interesting character. We still can understand her point of view and can even argue that her actions are justafiable. But her character has those motivations from the start of the play.

From a narrative point of view a villian can be evil from the start. It doesn't (have to) matter if they were at one time good. To make the translation to real life, you can think of a leader's rise to power as their narrative. Sure, there are some who have taken up power and then eventually been lead down an "evil" path (genocide or corruption) but there are pleanty who have risen to power already under that influence.

I think that in Wrath we're seeing a good villain treatment being used in a bad way. Some of the most interesting villains are the ones that don't have the overwhelming power or the unfathomable plot that barely gets averted at the last minute by the heroes. Drakuru, for example, was a really compelling bad guy for me because you got to see what he was actually up to. Sure, in the end he can be boiled down to the black-and-white treatment of "well he's just plain ol evil and power hungry", but you were allowed a glimpse of what was going on - the fact that he didn't just have immediate and all-powerful control of all things. The best example I can think of this is the archvillain in season three of Buffy - the Mayor. Through the season, you got to see his plans forming, him take steps both forward and backward, and so on. Villains are more interesting when it really feels like there's some back-and-forth with the good guys.

I think in the case of Arthas (and Illidan before him), we're looking at Blizzard attempting to do this, but missing the mark and ending up making it look like they're just doing a bad job of trying to turn them into sympathetic characters. If you try to see things from the standpoint of Blizz trying to write a story where it's not just overwhelmingly in favor of one side or another for the majority of the struggle, I think alot of the plot elements make much more sense.

Of course, you have to sort've gloss over the bits of "oooh poor Arthas just needed a hug from daaaddyyy" here and there.

The big problem with the Drakuru quest line is that it was mind-bleedingly obvious that he was Up to No Good, and yet your only option for resolution is to go along with it. I really would have liked the option just to kill him and save myself the later trouble, but I couldn't, because it doesn't fit with the narrative.

Not to mention the loots.