I really still don't understand this "there must always be a Lich King" stuff. Okay, so... Bolvar becomes the Lich King and seals himself away, but... wouldn't the Scourge still be pretty much as big a threat as before? Does beating Arthas just mean that now the Lick King can't walk around Apocalypsing stuff anymore?
Or is it supposed to be implicit that now the Scourge will just kinda sit around and do nothing until their magic wears off? Maybe this will be explained better later..
I really think it's as simple as another force will control the Scourge if someone isn't there to try to hold it back regardless if you wanna accept that there was another force or not. :p
I just have trouble believing that the Lick King(s) are so incompetent (or poorly-focused) that the Scourge would have been more successful without their being unified.
I mean, imagine if it worked like that with the Zerg in Starcraft:
Tassadar: Executor, the Overmind has been weakened, but I fear we have sustained severe damage ourselves. I will steer the Gantrithor into a collision course with the Overmind. If I can channel enough of the Dark Templars' energy through the hull of the Gantrithor, I should be able to bring swift death to the accursed abomination. Remember us, Executor. Remember what was done here today. May Adun watch over you.
Raynor: Wait... what?
Aldaris: That's a fucking terrible idea.
*Tassadar suicides*
Fenix: ... oh my god he just ran in.
Raynor: Stick to the plan, chums.
Aldaris: Who's soulstoned? We do have a soulstone up, don't we?
I just have trouble believing that the Lick King(s) are so incompetent (or poorly-focused) that the Scourge would have been more successful without their being unified.
It's not that they'd be more successful, it's that they'd be more destructive in the short term. Bolvar can (in theory) contain the Scourge and prevent that from happening.
"No Lich King" is certainly preferable to having Arthas in the position, but it still results in more death and destruction than having Bolvar wearing the crown.
A Lich King always being around is kind of a blah story, I rather suspect that in whatever expansion turns its attention back to the Lich King; there will be...something to break the cycle; they're probably well aware of not being able to get away with using this storyline repeatedly. Additionally this would beg the question of does the new Lich King eventually move elsewhere, to new zones etc, especially since he would presumably have powers of flame(in addition to frost or perhaps not).
I really still don't understand this "there must always be a Lich King" stuff. Okay, so... Bolvar becomes the Lich King and seals himself away, but... wouldn't the Scourge still be pretty much as big a threat as before? Does beating Arthas just mean that now the Lick King can't walk around Apocalypsing stuff anymore?
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"There must always be a Lich King" for 2 reasons:
- Firstly, The scourge is not wiped with arthas death. There are still lot of scourge minions on Azeroth/northrend which can be very dangerous and must be "controlled" during the time to wipe them.
- Secondly, Arthas is an human even as a the Lich King. So we can assume that the military principe/paradigm are still on his head. The scourge is an army for him. And maybe the scourge used as an army is easier to defeat ( With pitched battle, with big troup concentration, .. ) than an scourge without military discipline (Which made progress much like a plague with small troup scattered everywhere).
It still makes no sense. I half hope its all been an elaborate ploy by Ner'zhul if only because it would simply mean the characters were gullible and not that the plot was stupid. Either way I hope we see Argent/Ebon death squads around Azeroth slaying scourge to continue to thin their numbers towards eventual extinction.
What I really don't get is how it's making Bolvar's sacrifice out to be this eternal, long-suffering sort of thing with the emotional exchange between him and Tirion. If Bolvar-King really does command all the scourge, he can make them turn on themselves or, better yet, go inert. It's not as though the undead actually contribute to or sustain any sort of ecosystem which would come crashing down without them.
As for the sentient and still malevolent undead/humans/vrykul who would object or rebel, well... isn't that basically what all those OTHER undead are there fore? Bolvar could have the mindless and therefore controllable ghouls, aboms, frost wyrms etc. turn on the dangerous factors, and once everything was in order (which, given the immense powers the Lich King is reputed to hold over the undead, would not take very long) he could call up Tirion or hell, even something like A'dal to grant him his rest.
As for the sentient and still malevolent undead/humans/vrykul who would object or rebel, well... isn't that basically what all those OTHER undead are there fore? Bolvar could have the mindless and therefore controllable ghouls, aboms, frost wyrms etc. turn on the dangerous factors, and once everything was in order (which, given the immense powers the Lich King is reputed to hold over the undead, would not take very long) he could call up Tirion or hell, even something like A'dal to grant him his rest.
Still, that amounts to genocide. Especially the Vrykul are not portrayed as being unredeemable.
But it does raise another interesting point: what does it actually mean to have another Lich King? Presumably the mindless undead will be (somehow?) less of a threat, but how about the more intelligent factions that survive? The remaining Death Knights could join the Ebon Blade or form similar 'mercenary bands'. The Vrykul could learn to return to some kind of pre-Ymiron lifestyle, But the Cult of the Damned will possibly go underground, or focus their attention on something else (the Burning Legion? the Forsaken?). Remaining liches, if there are any, could probably keep up their own small Scourges for a while/
But honestly, I can only see this end in a bad way, eventually. Some unfortunate soul (probably a dwarf) is bound to someday re-awaken him, and introduce a new fire-based undead faction.
That still doesn't answer why he doesn't turn his forces against the card-carrying omnicidal maniacs in his employ. Or, for that matter, why he doesn't just render all the undead he CAN reach inert, leaving the people of Azeroth less to worry about.
Unless it's sort of like "Bolvar is locked in eternal mental combat with the evil of the Frozen Throne, and therefore can only barely maintain a grip on the scourge while blah blah blah." But even then, if he can't actively control them, aren't the undead effectively just kinda sitting there, maybe reduced to reacting to threats only? Ripe for a prot pally running in and rounding them up to aoe, as it were?
If we assume Ner'zhul is/was the actual controller of the scourge, whereas his past host body (Arthas) holded him back (the video gave this impression, too), then a new host to contain the actual controller make *some* sense.
The first batch of northrend undeath originated by Ner'zhul toying with mind tricvks on the local population, after all.
After the TFT events he gained a "body", but strictly talking I know no strong reference that say the undead-controlling power passed from Ner'zhul to Arthas.
For all I know, "The lich king" might have been Ner'zhul all along, with Arthas Moving/acting/whatever against his own will.
Using Banshees as example, when a banshee take control of an host body, the body do the acting, but the puppeteer is the banshee.
Depict the scenario where with no Arthas , the lich king isn't actually dead but in full control of Ner'zhul with all the previous power minus a moving body.
bind thou to thy lords from the end of the earth that rise to the field of the heavens
Didn't Ner'zhul survive as a piece of armor once? He could very well just keep controlling the Scourge in his "helm" form. Although there is the question of how he'd survive without some kind of encasing (like the famous ice shards). Last time it broke, there was much power sapping.
I share Vaccine's wish of seeing the Argents clearing as much of the Scourge that remains on Azeroth and Kalimdor as possible, but wouldn't such a a course of action, in some sense, work against the undead's pacification? Bolvar might feel the death of each of his minions, or he could simply feel Tirion didn't trust him enough. Which, coupled with having a raving shaman constantly whispering in his head might have some...ill consequences.
@LiteSabre: I'd guess the living Scourge affiliates, such as the Vry'kul and the Cult of the Damned, have been pretty much wiped. Leaders dead, operations sabotaged, etc. And they have no goals, which they need, as simply "going perma-berserk" isn't natural for rational beings.
@Hoenir: Even if Azeroth does have and ultimate source of death, it is not the Scourge. The undead serve are absolutely "alien" to any of the planet's ecosystems and aren't part of a cycle, as they infect those predators who eat them. Death must exist, yes, but not undeath. Eventually, if allowed to infiltrate an ecosystem, the undead will turn it into a necrosystem.
I'm a bit confused by the criticism here. There are lots and lots of scourge. We see them as bad (we the denizens of Azeroth, etc.). They are normally in some kind of control by the Lich King until, well, he completely loses it -- a la Arthas -- and has to be dispensed with. Arthas came to the job as a human who'd already gone off the deep end (see Stratholme, Culling of) but still retained some element of his humanity. That humanity allowed him to keep some measure of control over the scourge, but there are lots and lots of scourge. Then he starts to unleash them (see Plague, Zombie) and, well, that's not good. We need to go dispatch him once and for all.
Or do we? I mean Jaina the Naive sees his humanity somewhere under that crown. Is it there? No, she finally concludes. It's all gone and he must be dealt with once and for all. But wait... If we cut off the head 1000 new heads could grow in its place. The scourge is always growing in numbers. Death does not take a holiday. We must keep a modicum of control over them as Arthas once did for us. Enter Bolvar to take over and maintain that role.
This is not unlike the "Saddam Hussein Theory" which was that if we toppled Saddam in 1991, Iraq could splinter into several nutjob provinces / regimes that would wreak havoc across the world. It was deemed that lacking a strongman to replace Saddam, we should leave him (he's Arthas in case you are not following). That "bargain" brought some stability, but at a price, we still had Saddam. He's backing some terrorists here and there, we fear it could get worse. We decide to get him after all in 2003. (Forget the politics, please, stick with the story). But once he's gone, we can't just leave Iraq to splinter; the same problems we feared in the 1990s are still real.
Now replace Iraq with the scourge, don't view this as racist please, and you have the story of Wrath.
It would be entirely uninteresting if in two expansions we go kill Bolvar the same way we killed Arthas. I doubt very much they'd make that much of a mistake in recycling (although WoW's re-use of itself should earn a Green award of some kind). But surely Bolvar was already foreboding sounding when he donned the crown. Could he turn as bad as Arthas? Well, he wasn't nuts when he put it on -- or at least not too nuts having spent the past year in the Citadel as a prisoner. Could he hold off Ner'zhul better than Arthas did and maintain a better influence on the scourge? Time will certainly tell. This story will play out in Cataclysm in some small way, I'd expect, and prepare to make a major return down the road.
Is it entirely satisfying? No, not at all. But it's a lot better told than anything in TBC (just doing Culling, rolling a DK, and mucking through a few dozen quests in Icecrown and you feel like this is going somewhere) and has a coherency and an ending -- for the time being -- that Burning Crusade smashed to pieces when it tacked the Sunwell story on top of the Illidan story. I'm not a lore junkie by any means, but at least I feel like, we're on the cusp of doing something we set out to do more than a year ago. And like any great fantasy / sci-fi book or movie, there's foreshadowing that the impending victory is not really an end, but a beginning.
It makes sense now thinking back to Yogg's mind vision of Arthas torturing the Immolated Champion. But unlike Arthas who was shady before he wore the helmet, for all intents and purposes this is a good guy wearing the helmet now. The quest following the wrathgate is called Reborn From the Ashes, probably meaning he's some type of human phoenix. Alextrasza also states "All is not lost, From the ashes of the fallen will rise a force that will unite nations and purge the evil from this world".
Now does this mean humanity have some sort of secret army now?
It makes sense now thinking back to Yogg's mind vision of Arthas torturing the Immolated Champion. But unlike Arthas who was shady before he wore the helmet, for all intents and purposes this is a good guy wearing the helmet now. The quest following the wrathgate is called Reborn From the Ashes, probably meaning he's some type of human phoenix. Alextrasza also states "All is not lost, From the ashes of the fallen will rise a force that will unite nations and purge the evil from this world".
Now does this mean humanity have some sort of secret army now?
Well, I'm not really that much of a critic to the "Scourge going rampant, get to the helm" explanation. Arthas' Scourge did hold back a tad too much (the attacks on Stormwind and Orgrimmar weren't that fierce), so I can accept that. The wall banger part is how the Northrend Scourge would cross the sea to Azeroth and Kalimdor and their lack of leaders besides a few Death Knights (who mustn't have been officers either way, or they'd have been at Icecrown to help defend) and Necromancers.
Your analogy with Iraq is a great one and it makes complete sense. The problem is we don't really see any sign of the Scourge being a bigger menace without a leader. As I've stated above, their feeble attacks on two capitals show they were goating the Horde and Alliance to go to Northrend. But once there, what they found was more of an established species rather than a conquering army. We weren't treated, to my memory, to any retreating action, we easily infiltrated their major buildings to destroy their leader's heart...They were soundly defeated at the Wrathgate (we were too, of course, but it still shows their weakness) and whenever their leader showed, even if we'd just smashed a base or operation, he'd toy with us, either literally or by setting a minion on us.
We've had our share of informed threat and publicity, every other NPC stating the Scourge would overwhelm us, that they cannot be beaten by firepower alone, etc. But, for example, imagine this:
The demolisher quest in Icecrown. Instead of a Sunday afternoon's drive to the nearest beach or undead group, we could've gotten a quest in which a number of other demolishers joined us. Then, different from idly walking undead in pockets, we'd have a wave of them run at us after the first shots. The other demolishers would get crushed, their crews killed - they could use some screaming, like they did at the Wrathgate. Then, just as we were about to die, Mathias Lehner would port us into his dimension.
What we get are a few minutes of artillery striking and a kid telling us it was for naught. It might be imposing if you think about it: we bomb 100 undead and get none of their attention, they don't flinch, etc. And we almost didn't dent them. But the kid's words alone don't convey that sense of pointlessness.
So, the problems is, all things combined, we've leveled their structures, halted their production (and the new Lich King is not raising any reinforcements, death alone isn't a synonym of becoming a zombie) and "crippled" their leadership, to put it midly. We've done everything right. And they played the stoic all the time, even when our action did noticeably weaken them. It went from respect and fear-inducing at the start of Wrath to outright stupidity. Even worse when the Lich King gave the example.
I think it's a bit farfetched to assume that just because Bolvar is the Lich King now, that we're gonna have to climb back up there and kill him someday. His intentions are pure, unlike Arthas. The sword and his thirst for vengeance corrupted Arthas - be mindful of the atrocities he committed long before wielding Frostmourne.
Bolvar has taken these reigns to prevent anyone from being harmed by the Scourge. In what capacity, we do not know. But we know that he's damned himself to sit upon that Throne, encased in ice in order to protect humanity, not destroy it.
If and when we ever see him again, we can presume that he may even be coming to our aid, saving the day with his army of Fallen Champions. (I wouldn't exactly call this humanity's secret army, considering Tirion Fordring is the only person aware of it.)
But the part that matters most, is that as long as he commands the Scourge, no zealous necromancer can take the reigns and start using them for his own purposes. In the Azeroth of Cataclysm*, I suspect we won't be seeing any Undead at all, because it's presumed that Bolvar has withdrawn/buried them all.
One thing that quickly gained my attention in the video, was Terenas' line about "No King rules forever," and the unknown connection between Arthas and Yogg-Saron (besides the Saronite backbone). Those words were first spoken by Yogg-Saron during the Assassination of King Llane vision, so it's a bit eery to see them come up again. I'll be pleasantly surprised if all the events that have taken place in Northrend were just a part of the Old God's schemes.
* ie. Cataclysm content beyond level 80; not including the Plaguelands.
There are also some other interesting files in the patch 3.2.2 file. For instance, there is a Dalaran_Statue_Tirion, as well as a Dalaran_Statue_Warrior, as well as new wmo files for Dalaran. The Warrior statue texture shows it to be a statue of both Bolvar and Saurfang Jr. Bolvar's texture files, with LK helm on even (the red effect is really cool)
I have a little trouble with the "there must always be a Lich King" thing, but I think if you look at WoW the game it makes sense that Blizzard would do this.
Let's say for instance that we can defeat the Lich King and wipe out the scourge... Yup, no more undead (outside of the Foresaken). Nevermind that fact that a lot of everything we've done 1-80 has involved killing the undead, that's the past. In the future we can't run into any undead anymore. The scourge are gone, kaput-ski. Blizzard would be crazy to just write out any future involvement with an organized force of the undead.
But if there is a new Lich King (Bolvar), that means they can effectively just "put the scourge on ice" as it were. They can be considered gone and defeated for as long as Blizzard likes (maybe forever). But it allows them to bring the scourge back if they need to.
"All is not lost, From the ashes of the fallen will rise a force that will unite nations and purge the evil from this world".?
Purge the evil from this world... this coming from the Red Dragonflight.. may not actually mean that *we* are safe from that.
I had taken the whole "dangerous without a leader thing" as applying mostly to the mindless zombies running riot, since the intelligent factions probably wouldn't follow an new Lich King unconditionally. But what if they do? Could the Cult and the liches actually be convinced (or tricked?) into working with Bolvar?
be mindful of the atrocities he committed long before wielding Frostmourne.
What I wonder is, with Frostmourne broken, what exactly is/was the relationship here, and how does it affect The Lich Bolvar going forward. It was implied that Arthas gained power from and maybe was on some level controlled by Frostmourne, which is no longer part of the picture. Is Frostmourne having Arthas' soul what kept Arthas from really fighting back, and if so is the lack of Frostmourne what allows Bolvar to fight Ner'zhul?
If so, I think the must always be a Lich King scenario makes sense in the short term - someone has to control these things or Ner'zhul unbridled will tell them to go crazy and kill everything, since Arthas isn't there to hold him back. Perhaps down the line the number of undead will be so diminished we can go back and truly defeat Ner'zhul and free Bolvar?
Also, Bolvar speaks of Tyrion's (and our) destiny. I'm wondering if that has any real meaning or if Tyrion is finished as a character, along with Darion. Both were very Arthas-central although I'd like to see both have a life after Arthas.
Originally Posted by JamesVZ
Yeah, I guess if you don't consider pure happiness a flavor, Hitler.
Could the Cult and the liches actually be convinced (or tricked?) into working with Bolvar?
In the case of the Liches, whether you like your new boss or not has no bearing on his authority over you. As for the Cult of the Damned, I'm not sure they care "who" the Lich King is. Their goal as far as I can tell is to serve the Lich King and to make enemies out of everyone else (Alliance, Horde, Burning Legion, etc). I don't think that they ever had direct contact with Arthas anyway outside of a very few individuals.
"There must always be a Lich King" for 2 reasons:
- Firstly, The scourge is not wiped with arthas death. There are still lot of scourge minions on Azeroth/northrend which can be very dangerous and must be "controlled" during the time to wipe them.
- Secondly, Arthas is an human even as a the Lich King. So we can assume that the military principe/paradigm are still on his head. The scourge is an army for him. And maybe the scourge used as an army is easier to defeat ( With pitched battle, with big troup concentration, .. ) than an scourge without military discipline (Which made progress much like a plague with small troup scattered everywhere).
Actually I think there was always be a Lich King because they can't think of any other plot. Killing Arthas obviously woudln't annihilate the Scourge. Also I think (other than it shattering) it was the only way to avoid allowing Frostmourne to be a player attainable item.
This is not unlike the "Saddam Hussein Theory" which was that if we toppled Saddam in 1991, Iraq could splinter into several nutjob provinces / regimes that would wreak havoc across the world. It was deemed that lacking a strongman to replace Saddam, we should leave him (he's Arthas in case you are not following). That "bargain" brought some stability, but at a price, we still had Saddam. He's backing some terrorists here and there, we fear it could get worse. We decide to get him after all in 2003. (Forget the politics, please, stick with the story). But once he's gone, we can't just leave Iraq to splinter; the same problems we feared in the 1990s are still real.
Now replace Iraq with the scourge, don't view this as racist please, and you have the story of Wrath.
Please try to read the below apolitically, real world analogies are just that: analogies. No agenda intended.
You're making the fallacious assumption that the Scourge splinters would have the same goal(s). This is rarely the case, especially on something the scale of a nation.
I read an excellent article earlier today about the United State's "Tea Party" business of late. Basically a coalition of various political factions which worked together for a common goal (said goal happened to be against something rather than for it). They even successfully had a Senator elected. And literally within 24 hrs part of the "Tea Party" was verbally eviscerating this very same elected soon-to-be-Senator with very nasty allegations of how he will act in his personal life in the future (infidelity and murder to cover it up).
Cut off the head of the snake and get 1000 heads... many of whose priority is to eat other heads. "I'm a Lich and I've got 100 undead under my control. I can attack Stormwind and we're all destroyed, or I can attack Bob the Banshee and steal his 50 undead. If I lose 20 undead, I've got 130 undead net. Let's do it." The worm devouring its tail.
You continue military action against the larger heads (analogy: attack Al-Qaeda, doesn't matter that there are thousands of terrorist organizations in the world, it's currently viewed as the worst) to prevent any efficient central organization from re-forming.
Blizzard did what they did because Blizzard did what they did. Their logic skills are often weak, they just thought it would be "cool." Some will think it is, some won't. Trying to explain why it is/isn't logical and support/dismantle the end result is sadly moot. The interesting part now is the theorizing about what undead influences will be present in the future of Azeroth as fallout.
On a strictly game-related topic:
I never expect to revisit Bolvar-as-Bad-Guy. We won't return to Northrend unless they scrap/replace it a la vanilla in Cataclysm, which seems highly unlikely. Enter Icecrown from the front and fight Arthas, enter from another door and fight Bolvar? No, not gonna happen. Worse than the L60 BWL next door to L85 BWDescent issue discussed earlier.
If Bolvar goes bad he's part of the conclusion of WoW. Most likely a Ragnarok "trash the world" scenario. Bolvar's Scourge invading while the Burning Legion is attacking while the Titans are reoriginating while the Horde and Alliance are lobbing nukes at each other while Nozdormu, Leader of the Infinite Dragonflight, is unraveling all of history, while the mole men at the center of the earth (Er, Azeroth) have stopped the core spinning, while the Weathermen have stopped the rain, while the naga remnants (assuming dead Azshara by then) drain all the water off Azeroth, while the sun is going supernova, while the Old Gods turn into moths (Mothras?), while Robo-Illidan (rebuilt by a deranged Maieve) re-invades through the Dark Portal, while...
Rock: "We're sub-standard DPS. Nerf Paper, Scissors are fine."
Paper: "OMG, WTF, Scissors!"
Scissors: "Rock is OP and Paper are QQers. We need PvP buffs."
Could it be that, while the game didn't convey it due to a need for scaling and the respawning making up for the sense of numbers, our actions against the Scourge have been THAT surgical? That while preventing them of their main facilities and means of bolstering their armies - apart from surviving Death Knights and Necromancers - they're still THAT numerous?
It's truly sad that the game has failed to convey that feeling other than through words, really, even if technical limitations are to blame. All we really have is the word of god...
And I still can't get my head around how would the Scourge's main forces leave Northrend. Well, some has to have built those structures, so making boats might not be unattainable.
Edit: Damn, Terenas really is mad at his kid...out of all the characters Arthas killed or betrayed, he seems the most rancorous and adamant in making him pay. Serves the spoiled brat.
02/02/10, 2:29 AM
