Another conclusion to draw is that because it doesn't work as an Act division, it isn't one.

Storywise we don't encounter the scourge much between Wrathgate and Icecrown (they're barely in Grizzly Hills or Storm Peaks, and aren't in the second half of Zul'drak); the period in between is time for the Horde / Alliance animosity to simmer, and for the Argent Crusade (and Scarlet Onslaught, for that matter) to start the attack into Icecrown.

In terms of the Arthas / Scourge story, I'd peg these points as the major divisions:

- Act 1: Alliance / Horde arrive in Northrend and amass forces. Initial successes against the Scourge in Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord. Wrathgate happens.
- Act 2: Armies move into Icecrown. The Alliance / Horde cold war heats up. Tirion realises that Arthas can only be defeated by an elite group, and sets up the Tournament to find suitable heroes. Arthas and Anub'arak attack the tournament.
- Act 3: Patch 3.3.

The greatest merit of WotLK is that it introduced a lot of new ways to interact with the main villain. Granted, it's still a flawed scheme, since all the new concepts are just that: concepts. Nobody really knows how to create a villain that everyone can interact to, but it does bring some new ideas. The Frostmourne cave, the landing in Dragonblight, littered with the ghosts of soldiers that still look up to Arthas as their savior, the Mattias Lehner quests, brief interludes in Howling Fjord (especially my favorite one 'Shamanism has brought you here... I was once a shaman...'), the Wrathgate cinematic.

I suppose if Deathwing will serve as the central figurehead for an expansion, I would like to interact with the character more by visions of the past, glimpses into his inner turmoil, than the Dick Dastardly kind of schemes he's been up to all this time. Maybe a face-off where you fail miserably and are saved by outside intervention...

Deathwing though is an entirely different sort of villain and I think it would be wholly appropriate if whatever interaction with him we had was entirely different as well. When we meet and best his lieutenants he should appear and stomp us flat. And when we miraculously survive and meet him again he should talk about having though he exterminated us "insects" and stomp us flat again. Every time we meet him and he stomps us we should lose allies; the scene should get darker and darker and when we finally do face him we should have nothing left to lose.

I think the issue is not purely in finding ways to interact with the villain (Wrath did this well, in my opinion), but in making the villain seem credibly powerful while simultaneously having the player "win" their way through the game. While some of the Scourge schemes we've foiled have not had any direct interaction with Arthas (such as the assault on Sholazar), it does add up to the feeling that we're not meeting much resistance.

What would work, I think, would be for the Good Guys to have more pyrrhic victories, or more lose-lore situations. Think Wrathgate, except where the main villain is behind it; we ultimately "win" in some sense, but the costs are very high.

This is probably the way it will happen, given it's what Blizzard did repeatedly in Wrath. We survive the Eye of Eternity because of the Reds, and we survive the Cathedral of the Damned because of the Ebon Blade.

That's how i've felt about it. Especially with the Blue post that said that we'll be surprised with the Icecrown raid/patch, and presumably, how vicious or evil Arthas can be.

I'm really impressed with the way that they have integrated Arthas into the experience of leveling, encountering him not too often, but every once in awhile ... to remind you why you're leveling, why you're in a bleak, cold and isolated area, (compared to the rest of Azeroth, not in regards to the 1928323482348 player characters), and to show you as you level, "Sure, you took him down. Then I showed up, and just laughed. How are you going to sleep tonight? I LET you go. I'm TESTING you."

I guess for me, his mind games are pretty interesting to see. And as for throwing his 'best and brightest' ... i'd say that he's simply throwing 'something'. He can raise them up again ... remember? So it isn't about what we kill, but us proving that we CAN kill it. The fact that he's sending increasingly hostile and virile villains for us to wreck face against, means to me that we're closing in on the point where he will actively engage, and show us his true colors as he turns us.

I guess the thing that sticks out most to me ... is I don't see where all of this 'foiling' has happened. We killed a few 'meh' level loyalists to him. Wrathgate? Oh, he killed Saurfang Jr., and his minions + the RAF stuff killed a LOT more, not to mention Bolvar. What awful casualties did he suffer against the might of the Alliance and Horde? He had a cough. Ooh. We foiled him. Anywhere else, I can't even think of a true 'foiling' of his plans. Anub'arak? Come on. Read what he says when he shows up. He's absolutely screwing with us. No question.

Who's to say that the surroundings for our fight with Anub'arak weren't twofold ... a way to further weed us out, and irritate / demoralize / screw with us ... and a prison for Anub'arak, the one that we freed in Azjol'Nerub, and was raised again to forcibly serve and die again? Maybe that's why it's sparse and not overly decorated.

Long post summarized, I feel this talk of 'he shows up, hijinks ensue, but at the end of this week's episode, he's on his face with a bootprint on his butt, imagining next week's plan' is way way over-dramatizing what has actually happened. (Much like I feel the over-dramatizing of Varian / Garrosh has escalated over the course of this thread, despite no new developments with their in game persona in so long ... but that's another post.)

We stopped the expansion attempts into Sholazar and Zul'drak, and cleared Naxxramas, along with numerous successes in Icecrown. While most haven't exactly been high-level plans (we don't have any interaction with him in Sholazar, for example), they have been victories. Besides, what is he meant to do when he shows up? Admit that we're actually winning, or bluff and bluster?

(It's somewhat telling that nobody's mentioning Naxxramas. Despite being the first major dungeon, and despite containing a major lore character, the raid itself had almost no link to the actual plot of the game. A lost opportunity, I think, although 3.3 might change that)

Put it another way: what successes has Arthas had this expansion, large or small?

I think the statement that "X is the end of Act I" strongly implies things about when Act 2 starts. We've had a lot of plot developments since that point too.

I'm not saying the Lich King just stands there and loses or that it's all flowers and rainbows. But, for the most part, that's what we're shown. Com on, I agreed that the Drakuru thing was a show of strength by the Lich King, he came out on top, etc, but it's like all the dangerous things in life: you don't learn until it happens to you or someone you do like. It NEVER happens to us, apart from that shamanic vision episode. Now that's being truly dominated. Yet nothing alike happens for the rest of WotLK until now. We have no other reason to fear him, not for ourselves, but for the outcome of the war. That's what matters, not that we live, but that the world isn't dominated by him.

So he survived a chemical attack. That's hardly a surprise, we know he wouldn't die so soon and we all now how powerful he his. So why isn't it truly shown? Of course he can wipe us with a spell, is that truly a surprise?

We need to actually suffer or see our surroundings suffer. Not Dragonballian displays of power. We need him to appear and kill a friendly NPC working with us on a quest. We need to see that NPC and many others raised in front of us. An entire base massacred. That has been done with the Forsaken. For a moment, before I read about it, I actually thought Sylvannas had betrayed the Horde. I wondered if the current forsaken players would turn into a splinter faction.

That's the reason you don't use the main villain too much and too personally. What, did anyone think we, as characters, were in danger? Of course not, we're the true heroes. It would be Arthas losing. No one has any fear of today's and history's dictators. Not as individuals. We fear their effects on our world.

Now, about Deathwing:

Arthas could indeed act on a personal, psychological level. He's a human/orc. He knows how we think, which his why the shamanic vision thing is his greatest - and only, in fact - act of true dominance in WotLK. Deathwing is nothing like us. He doesn't care about us, just like he didn't care about Rhonin and paid for it. He's so immersed in his power and so spiteful of lesser beings that he doesn't include us in his math. So when I think of interacting with a villain such as him, of course I'm not thinking of him talking to me, scaring me, etc. It would be ridiculous, I'd hardly dent his scales. It's precisely his otherwordly power, the fact that he is - in size, race, power and menace-factor - so much larger than us and even any other villain we've faced except Kil'Jaeden that truly makes me fear the guy. In order for Cataclysm to actually succeed in making us interact with Deathwing, the trick is to constantly remind us that not all the victorious battles in the world will take us to victory in the war. We're facing an Elemental War. A dragon offensive. Naga incursions. Do you think there's any hope. Oh, right, there's an Aspect at the end of this and he's trashed the entire planet, too. I can't think of a single moment in which Deathwing could interact with us as individuals without lowering himself as a being. Maybe Blizzard can come up with them, but I want to fight a losing war and actually lose. That's how wars are. THey get shit+fan-bad before getting better.

Did we really stop the excursions? I mean, we had Freya's Avatar's help, and the help of the Titans Super Weapon thing. I'd say that's like "I stopped that group of 10 soldiers by myself! Me, and myself and my tank. That's right, just me." (No sarcasm or anything intended, just trying to put it into perspective).

Not to mention that the zone was also about showing the effects on the more peaceful or 'peon' races with the Oracles / Frenzyheart. Something tells me that they could care less about the rest of the world, but the rest of the world was affecting them. In a big way. (Those dying Oracles that we rescued ... man, that was just some sad stuff.)

Zul'Drak wasn't exactly cleansed, although we ruffled some feathers there, it was us really learning more than actually affecting massive change, at least that I remember. And it was about us seeing that someone that we outright helped was tricking us from point 1, and working for the guy we thought we were fighting. That, in my opinion, was the whole point of the zone. (Who knows how much of that was planned from the start? We say 'Chaos and Free Will can't be planned ..' did you ever see The Dark Knight? The Joker's plan was ... massive, really. But it worked. Well. Mostly.)

Clearing Naxxramas was, in my opinion, almost meaningless if you look at the zone below it. Sure, we cleared out the place, wiping out 13 bosses and some minions ... but the place below it still sees a Citadel. The Scourge still has a rallying point, and there is tons of chaos below, still. (And did we ever get that damned Phylactory?) Sure it was more of a 'Experience' than 'Lore Gem' raid, but it isn't a surprise at all that Arthas didn't really care about losing it. He didn't exactly try and hide it from us.

And yes, he actually has acknowledged that we've surprised him, or at least surpassed his expectations. If that's not 'bad guy' talk for 'you're winning when I didn't think you would',... I don't know what is. So no, I don't think we're wiping the floor with him. I think we're winning, at least at this point, where he expected us to. This isn't Normandy, this is running blindly into an ambush. (I hope ...)

Edit: Almost forgot about the little people.

Zul'drak has two parts to the anti-Scourge effort; the Argent Crusade section, and the Ebon Blade / Drakuru stuff. The former doesn't have much beyond killing mindless minions, while the latter involves an actual plan that we prevent (conversion of the trolls). It seems like the loss of this opportunity is balanced by Arthas' amusement at our progress. We didn't cleanse the zone, but I have trouble believing it went as Arthas wanted.

As for Naxx, I felt that the (relatively unchanged) state of Wintergarde was more a result of game mechanics, just as how Coldarra and Dragonblight aren't really affected by defeating Malygos in the Eye. I don't know about Horde side, but there are about a dozen Alliance-side quests that involve the area under Naxx, and by the end we're told that We've Won (which is a good leadup to the twist at Wrathgate).

No phylactery though, you're right. I wouldn't be surprised to see him again in Icecrown; he wouldn't be the first raid boss to reappear. He wouldn't even be the first one with those intials.

This whole discussion is about how the events we've seen with the Lich King have or have not shown the extent of his power. Explain to me how being able to instantly kill entire legions of your most hated enemies (and have them reanimated to do your bidding) doesn't show awesome power.
This is lore we're talking about; the "its too early in the expansion for him to die" reason doesn't really fly when talking about how he is able to survive that chemical attack with an insignificant amount of damage taken. From a gameplay/marketing perspective, sure, but that's not the point of this thread.

What would you call Saurfang's death? He pretty much got dominated and it seems to be expected that we will fight him in Icecrown at some point.

I have to slightly disagree with the discussion about the point of Zul'drak as a zone. Drakuru is important to the overall story, yes, but I think the most menacing thing about the zone is the fact that by the time we get there the Scourge has already been stopped. Yes, the Argent Crusade is there, and yes the Ebon Blade are there, but it was the Trolls of Zul'drak that fought back the Scourge, and it is the absolutely horrendous lengths they had to go to in order to accomplish that that seems like the message the zone is attempting to convey.

They destroyed their entire society, and brought down their own gods in order to stop the forces of Arthas. That gives me the shivers.

Of course we didn't do it alone, but also ask yourself if any of these things would have gotten done or succeeded if not for the player character. We were pivotal in each of the Lich King's defeats, effectively being the cause of his lose of all ground in Borean, Howling Fjord, Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills (Arugal), Zul'Drak, Sholozar, and most of Icecrown, not to mention we ravaged his small presence in Storm Peaks.

In the mean time, the only display of raw power that actually made me consider him a real threat is when he one-shot Saurfang Jr at the Wrathgate. From then on it's all Arthas trying to get back up off the ground, but he just can't quite make it. It's likely that he fully intended to end things there, but the Forsaken Blight weakened him enough that it wasn't feasible anymore, and he lost his chance to completely crush the Alliance and Horde before things got out of hand.

He's just fumbling around now and grasping at what he can, sending out what he has left at us. If he intended for us to get this far in an attempt to refine us before killing us and raising us into his army, it just proves that Arthas is incompetent as a schemer. There's absolutely no way we were worth the loss of nearly all of Northrend and a substantial amount of powerful lieutenants and promising projects. If we were stopped earlier, all of the things we had dismantled earlier could have been utilized to stop the advance of the Alliance and Horde before the got to Icecrown Citadel. Instead, we're standing at his front door and jousting. In 3.3 we're going to have free reign over Icecrown Citadel to ruin what plans he has left hidden away, and finally come for him in the raid.

Some things we know about Arthas:
1) Schizophrenic, at least until recently? (If Ner'zhul is gone..), which must have had an affect on the overall sanity and logical processes running in his mind. Even prior to the Armor and the Sword, he wiped out a bunch of people that weren't yet affected by the bad grain, (arguable whether this was the right/wrong decision), and then pwnt his Daddy. If that doesn't require a certain ... type ... of mindframe, or lack of reasonble or critical thinking processes being broken, I don't know what was.

2) We don't really know his end game. Nowhere has it stated "My name is Arthas. I want to take over the world." or "I want to enslave everyone." or "I want to raze Azeroth." It really never states an end game.

3) We haven't directly engaged him. Some of our most powerful allies were slain by something that made him cough. He shows up, wherever he pleases, whenever, regardless of who is around, and dances his dance and leaves again, at a whim.

4) He knows we're here, and who we are. He knows our allies, he knows what we're doing, and is completely unafraid to disrupt, even in a minor way, our progress.

The 'projects' that he's had all over Northrend,... sure they may have been halted, but he can raise the dead... so they can just start up again. If he wanted to crush us, he would have done it while we were playing in Ulduar. Or Naxxramas. Or attacked our cities, directly.

To be honest, the more I think about Arthas, and his dealings with us, the more i'm reminded of the Joker in the Dark Knight. He is not about plans, he's about chaos. He's not about the end game, but the journey. He cares little, if at all, for who serves him, as long as he has fun and leaves a path of change, of whatever type, behind. I mean hell, the Joker was jailed ... and we all know how that turned out. Arthas has a whole fortress still, essentially unlimited forces, and powers we have only begun to anticipate. The 'losses' he's sustained are insubstantial to the effects he has had. They™ even mentioned that the lengthy and exhausting campaign in Northrend demoralized us, and we returned to find Deathwing playing Dig Dug with Azeroth.

Also, one thing i've thought about, is the gameplay mechanic that allows for little visual changes to happen, (i.e. killing 10 of [Creature] seems to have 0 effect on how many are still there) seems to work in the favor of what I think Arthas is trying to do. Showing us that no matter how hard we work, how many we kill ... it's having almost no effect at all, and we're taking heavy casualties that at the best, dwindle our numbers, at worst, bolster his. I think it almost is meta-interesting how detached we can be from the story of a zone ... I felt like such a jerk leaving Dragonblight to go to Grizzly Hills ... where I felt like "Oh ,... i'm done fighting the Scourge now for awhile? ...am I abandoning them for greener pastures?"

And where do we go after seeing the atrocities of the Trolls and the Drakuru incident? To help Hemet kill animals. Yep. We're not becoming desensitized to relentless murder, hostility, destruction and the loss of friend, family and fellow soldiers ... or having to strike them down after they've been raised. And that's what I think Arthas is doing, causing us to lose sight of what matters, and cause chaos. And in that respect, I find it terrifying. I keep going back to it, but the Oracles really jarred me, and made me feel a bit like a bastard, and not taking into account all the loss we've felt, and really just shrugged off over the years. If we can do that, what stretch is it to become like Arthas next?

Edit: If it isn't showing, i'm really enjoying this discussion. And I can't wait to see what of these ideas/theories that Blizzard confirms/denies/shows us in the coming months.

I've been meaning to get to this, but part of the reason the Lich King isn't particularly impressed with anything we do is that he has a whole continent to micromanage. And I'm sure even the Drakkari trolls' desperate sacrifice amuses him, because, left without their gods... how long will they last in the face of an enemy that feeds on your own fallen?

By contrast, a few adventurers killing one of his middle management by deceit and manipulation mean nothing to him. As a matter of fact, some part of him might actually enjoy the irony of it, or if indeed the flame of humanity has been snuffed out from him, he'd at least appreciate the covert mechanics of the whole operation.

Arthas is probably the only villain in the entertainment world who can be excused for not giving a fuck, for showing up to taunt us, and for being overconfident even when the enemies are on his own doorstep. Because his perspective now probably extends way beyond the scope of anyone's mortal lifetime, he has all the time in the world to wait. He knows that the bitter feuds between the Horde and Alliance will play out , as soon as any form of organized assault begins to stall (as indeed they have, although probably faster than he expected, via the RAS and Varimathras - although the favorable development wasn't exploited, because it caused some damage to the only thing he thought invulnerable - himself). He knows that even an assault on his very own citadel might be repelled, with the scores of fallen enemies littering the fortress rising up behind the invaders. And, if nothing else, he knows Frostmourne alone is enough to tip the balance in his favor, sometimes in face of overwhelming odds.

I think there are two reasons we have been arguing in the last couple of pages about how weak Arthas looks.

First, there is the fact that we don't actually witness our main defeat in LK. I thought the whole Tournament thing is an excuse to create an elite fighting force to infiltrate the Citadel, because an all-out attack didn't work. That's why there's a Valley of Fallen Heroes in Icecrown. We actually lost a lot of people there - but we never see that battle.

Second, it's the way the lore in 3.2 worked, I suppose. Arthas' appearance in the raid could have been a crowning moment of preparation for 3.3... but instead it was just an exercise in suspension of disbelief. We are merrily fighting some bosses, then wasting resources killing the Faction Champions because of yet another display of Garrosh/Varian pettiness, then... Arthas shows up. And the NPCs' reaction to it is simply missing. Tirion does make the usual paladiny speech of "surrender now", but it's really, really hard to believe that Garrosh and Varian would just stand there with Arthas before them - for once, they had reason to do an impetuous thing, and they don't. And, worse, Jaina doesn't say a word - even though it's probably the first time she has seen her former lover as the monster he has become.

Not to mention the fact that we, the players, just get a lame "you can't attack this target" message, when the obvious thing to do is strike Arthas immediately. It would have been much more believable if we tried to attack him, he knocked everyone back and stunned us, and then break the ground, or something of the sort. Just a little thing that would have made a world of difference.

3.2 was very frustrating lorewise, and I think that's why we're a bit wary of what could happen in 3.3.

As someone pointed out, this can be achieved by having the players finish quests but always be a step behind the lich king. Sort of like "yea you saved the town, but the Lich King just decimated all of Grizzly hills" sort of thing. As you do the quests and complete them, the overall war effort turns south. The Villian, in essence, mocks you because he continues to win despite your best efforts and the outcome gets bleaker. That actually builds up to a climax. Currently, we've won every encounter with the Lich King and we know we're going to win Ice Crown. Honestly, outside of it being an potentially awesome instance, who is really excited about the lore thats going to come out of 3.3?

Whats even more disconcerting is that none of the instances up to 3.2 really had much of anything to do with the Lich King and even in 3.2, we roflstomp his servant. Again.

Amen, Faldrath.

The problem with Arthas' appearances is they're mostly...incomplete. They leave too much to imagination. In the attack against the Light Chapel, he wiped the floor with the Argent Dawn's top men. That was cool. And his defeat made sense too, it was Tirion's rise, his time to shine.

The attack on Arthas' heart could at least have ended with our team decimated and Tirion and us left alive.

No one around us seems to be afraid (even angry-afraid) of Arthas. They just Tab-Attack him. How are we to fear him? Tirion hints at him being defeatable by all those present at the Tournament. That may be so, yes, but he should have some answer to that. Like creating a wall of ice between him and the audience, preventing them to see what happens to us until it's too late. Summoning something to occupy the faction leaders.

And still, with all the all lore-flaws 3.2 had, I'll say it again, it set the biggest - and worst - mood for things to come. It was real sacrifice. It was, it seems, all necessary. And there's nothing worse than doing what's necessary when it's not exactly...right.

One thing to keep in mind is Scourge culture as shown to us through the Death Knight starting area. It is extremely rare for Scourge to care for their own in any way, shape or form. Failure means death, either by the hand of your enemies or the Lich King's own hand. That Arthas continually allows us to defeat his minions without lifting a finger is in keeping with this culture. Any minion too weak to defeat us is not worth saving, and any minion strong enough to defeat us doesn't need saving.

This seems like hubris, as we come from a culture where forces and supplies are often finite and only replenishable in limited quantities with a notable drop in quality when demand begins to exceed supply. To us, the losses Arthas has incurred seem crippling, but this is only because we're looking at them from our perspective as Alliance and Horde. Losing a continent entails a large loss of population, resources, history, and time and effort for any living civilization. For the undead, however, none of those particularly matter. If Arthas were to trash all of Kalimdor and then inexplicably pull out, it would take decades, even centuries to recover fully. If we were to pull out of Northrend tomorrow, Arthas would have the entire continent in a year or less, especially considering that we've personally dealt with the only other major powers on the continent in his place (Yogg-Saron and the Drakkari).

Even though we are on the doorstep of Icecrown, we can't really say we have Arthas hemmed in. Are we really doing anything that prevents him from moving about freely? He wasn't particularly afraid of us when both Alliance and Horde were united in arms against him, does he really have any greater reason to fear us now that we're at each other's throats and showing our impotence in our inability to succeed in a large scale assault on his fortress?

It's hubris on his part perhaps, but at the same time it's the ultimate gambit. If we, the precision strike teams, fail to bring him down he's won everything. Not only will he have defeated us, but also gained the strongest possible minions, champions without equal. The meager gains we have achieved will quickly evaporate.

Thats great and all but we already know the outcome. We know that Arthas will die and Deathwing will be the new baddie. Arguing this point is kind of like going to watch Titanic and expecting that somehow the ship might not sink in the end. We could draw out an entire plot in the event we should fail and Arthas win, but we won't fail and Arthas won't win. In that regard, having Arthas lose constantly against us in quests and instances, and then finally in his own Citadel makes him seem like a gigantic chump.

In comparing Icecrown to Sunwell, at least in Sunwell we were trying to prevent Kil'Jaeden from entering our realm. That tied up the Kael'Thas storyline and TBC rather nicely. So far, Icecrown seems to only bring to conclusion a gigantic fail of a villain. A fitting end I guess, since Arthas' foe Illidan met the same fate.

Hang on a second. The reason you are invalidating a logical explanation for Arthas' behavior is because WE know he's going to die? I'm sorry, but that's a little absurd. HE doesn't know he's going to die. In fact that's sort of Darion's point. Arthas is so certain that he will defeat anything that's thrown at him, that he's letting the tournament happen; this way when he wins (as he's certain he's going to) he will have the most powerful beings the Horde and Alliance can put together under his command. He doesn't care that we destroy such a large portion of his army, he thinks he can defeat us all himself. The fact that WE have been told that we are going to defeat him doesn't mean shit when talking about his motives.

By that very philosophy, the Lich King shouldn't care about developing us into more powerful beings before corrupting us. Just take us when convenient and slot us in a role. If we're stronger, we'll rise in the hierarchy, if weaker we'll die (again). He doesn't care if we're strong or weak, remember? We're replaceable.

A good example is Drakuru. Arthas blasts him to bits. By his own twisted logic he should turn, strike us down, raise us, and say "Do his job better or next time you're the smear on the landscape." Why would he be amused at Drakuru's failure? He sees is on a regular basis and just replaces the noobs.

He's had opportunities to pick us off individually, like killing a bee. Why would he wait for us to gather together as champions and come as a single strong unit? Sometimes even a swarm of ordinary honey bees can kill.