Why can't bolvar not just order all of scourge to kill themselves

[Deleted]

then there would be no more need for a lich king and he can go and retire.

[Deleted]

Because Bolvar is evil?

[TheWindWalker]

If Blizzard really wanted that situation to make sense, there wouldn't "need" to be a Lich King in the first place. As people have been complaining about since 3.3: Almost every quest line that involves Scourge leads to a Quest that can be summarized as "kill their commanders, without direction they're much less of a threat" but for some reason after destroying nearly all the Scourge across all of the surface of Northrend all the way to and into ICC and occupying the friggin content suddenly... there "needs to be someone holding them back."

...Right. Someone check Uther's Ghost and see if that was actually Kil'jaeden.

[Deleted]

Silly question requires a silly answer.
Because of 42. There you got the answer.

[Dagoth Ur]

Because he doesn't want to.

[Bullerick]

Because he loves them. He always did.

[Aquamonkey]

What happened to Bolvar? We haven't seen him reign in the scourge at all. What's he doing on the Throne?
DK: It wasn't an easy transition for him. You gotta give him a little bit of time. He was kind of melted for a little while and then he was stuck in an ice cube. It's tough. That's a hard thing to go through.
CM: The Scourge and Cult of the Damned currently operating in Plaguelands are likely autonomous. The idea with Bolvar putting that helmet on, attempting to contain the Scourge... It's really about Northrend. "I just got on a boat yesterday and those quests are still happening." Ideally, if this thing had a clean timeline, which it does not... If we were making a movie... If we were writing it as a novel, with him on that Frozen Throne, the Scourge has gone to sleep in Northrend. But obviously it doesn't play out that way in the game. You can still go back and do all those quests.

But that is the intent of the fiction. That things aren't as bad as they were and he is not a monstrous Lich King. He's actually trying to keep everybody chill. There won't be any major crazy new Scourge attacks... for some time. But the Scourge operating in Plaguelands, it's more helpful to look at them as autonomous. Although, we haven't really dug out a lot of lore to substantiate that. "How are they autonomous?" "Who's driving these critters?" "Zombies don't have free will."
DK: Well certainly as Arthas' power waned, he lost control of the Forsaken. So we got a new Lich King getting his feet wet.
CM: Totally. (BlizzCon2011)

Bolvar was too weak of a LK to do anything other than put them to sleep. Like the TNG episode "Best of Both Worlds", sleep is a simple command. Maybe he's more powerful now, but seems like he wants his undead army to stick around.

[Koryn123]

Bolvar probably sees how useful his army of disgusting monsters nobody would care about dying are against a threat like the Legion. Even if he can't send them out of Northrend for fear of losing his control over them, he can still protect places like the Nexus and Ulduar if he feels like it. And he can provide support for the Ebon Blade too.

[Zandalariprelate]

Bolvar probably sees how useful his army of disgusting monsters nobody would care about dying are against a threat like the Legion. Even if he can't send them out of Northrend for fear of losing his control over them, he can still protect places like the Nexus and Ulduar if he feels like it. And he can provide support for the Ebon Blade too.

So far he had never helped Ulduar or the Nexus when they were assaulted by the legion army during the campaign of mages and warrior, the only help he provide is give power to the deathlord to raise powerful minions and maybe the new recruits units of ghouls/geist and death knights/ravagers are from him but nothing ese

[Smog]

Because the entirety of the writing involving the Scourge, Lich King, and Bolvar post-Arthas is a complete hackjob that makes virtually no sense.

[Koryn123]

So far he had never helped Ulduar or the Nexus when they were assaulted by the legion army during the campaign of mages and warrior, the only help he provide is give power to the deathlord to raise powerful minions and maybe the new recruits units of ghouls/geist and death knights/ravagers are from him but nothing ese

Oh, then that's dumb and Bolvar is dumb.

Kel'thuzad needs to rally the Cult of the Damned and easily wrest control of the Northrend Scourge from a paladin with no experience with necromancy. It's comparable to a baby with a gun vs. a guy super experienced with like all forms of martial arts. That baby can do some damage, but first he needs to gain the muscle and brain development to actually know how to pull a trigger, and to know that that would actually hurt the guy. And Bolvar is the baby.

Make the Scourge Great Again.

Something I'd like to see would be for the Scarlet Crusade to make a comeback (but not be immediately stomped back into the mud), like our honorable tactics of fighting the Scourge don't work (because there's like no reason whatsoever why fighting honorably against an honorless foe should yield better results than the Scarlet Crusade's much more effective solution) and we end up working for a slightly less xenophobic Crusade (only just barely tolerant enough to not murder the non-human races), like those who were meeting for cooperation at Light's Hope Chapel, sent by Abbendis, back in Vanilla.

I want the Scarlet Crusade back. In my opinion, they were the greatest loss in the Cataclysm revamp. It makes the Plaguelands feel so much more empty with the bland, boring Argent Crusade holding everything and doing very little exciting stuff. And then attacking Tyr's Hand and apparently easily conquering it from the Risen Scarlet Crusaders with pretty much zero effort. It should have been a long campaign and siege, like the Death Knight starting experience. That was a much more believable and satisfying attack. Not "you're here in this awesome city that's so underused, now kill three named mobs, and 5 unnamed generic mobs. Okay, cool, now we won, go ahead and get out of here now."

[scrappybristol]

What happened to Bolvar? We haven't seen him reign in the scourge at all. What's he doing on the Throne?
DK: It wasn't an easy transition for him. You gotta give him a little bit of time. He was kind of melted for a little while and then he was stuck in an ice cube. It's tough. That's a hard thing to go through.
CM: The Scourge and Cult of the Damned currently operating in Plaguelands are likely autonomous. The idea with Bolvar putting that helmet on, attempting to contain the Scourge... It's really about Northrend. "I just got on a boat yesterday and those quests are still happening." Ideally, if this thing had a clean timeline, which it does not... If we were making a movie... If we were writing it as a novel, with him on that Frozen Throne, the Scourge has gone to sleep in Northrend. But obviously it doesn't play out that way in the game. You can still go back and do all those quests.

But that is the intent of the fiction. That things aren't as bad as they were and he is not a monstrous Lich King. He's actually trying to keep everybody chill. There won't be any major crazy new Scourge attacks... for some time. But the Scourge operating in Plaguelands, it's more helpful to look at them as autonomous. Although, we haven't really dug out a lot of lore to substantiate that. "How are they autonomous?" "Who's driving these critters?" "Zombies don't have free will."
DK: Well certainly as Arthas' power waned, he lost control of the Forsaken. So we got a new Lich King getting his feet wet.
CM: Totally. (BlizzCon2011)

Bolvar was too weak of a LK to do anything other than put them to sleep. Like the TNG episode "Best of Both Worlds", sleep is a simple command. Maybe he's more powerful now, but seems like he wants his undead army to stick around.

I wouldn't call him weak.

Arthas spent at least 4+ years asleep in ice before Wrath, now after around the same amount of time Bolvar is stretching his legs

[Evangeliste]

To me it just seems a bit of a strange thing to expect thousands of Scourge to just stop still and cease existing - or die by self-inflicting. They are undeath to begin with I understand but I guess the point of undeath is they continue on unlike the living who eventually languish.
I guess as soon as Bolvar doned the Helm, he was pretty weak to begin with... he was chained up like a gimp in front of Arthas's throne like a pet. Must have been pretty tired to hang there with no shame like that and then once freed, encased himself and automatically laid his army to sleep as he did. I suppose putting them to sleep is a safer option because if you kill them then they could be released from his service and their bodies used by others? I wouldn't know who but there's a lot of possibilities that could come up, this is Blizzard after all. So the safer option is to remain in his control but deactivated.

Let's face it, Bolvar will come with his own expansion. Sylvanas is warchief and has quite heavy implications and ties to the previous lore that was present in Northrend. I reckon things that were left unsaid, or really down trodden events such as Scarlet Crusade could quite possibly be in the mix. I mean we did raise Whitemane and that could quite literally throw a cat amongst the pigeons. Time will tell.

To add though the conversation that Bolvar and Tirion had now seems really weird. It may not really be canon anymore but he said Bolvar died with the Lick King in paraphrasing and he was the jailor of the damned. To be forgotten so that the fear of tyranny is no longer around... I wonder if that means Bolvar will actually forsake his name? Either way being a jailor of the damned is pretty much an eternal job.

[Oneirophobia]

What happened to Bolvar? We haven't seen him reign in the scourge at all. What's he doing on the Throne?
DK: It wasn't an easy transition for him. You gotta give him a little bit of time. He was kind of melted for a little while and then he was stuck in an ice cube. It's tough. That's a hard thing to go through.
CM: The Scourge and Cult of the Damned currently operating in Plaguelands are likely autonomous. The idea with Bolvar putting that helmet on, attempting to contain the Scourge... It's really about Northrend. "I just got on a boat yesterday and those quests are still happening." Ideally, if this thing had a clean timeline, which it does not... If we were making a movie... If we were writing it as a novel, with him on that Frozen Throne, the Scourge has gone to sleep in Northrend. But obviously it doesn't play out that way in the game. You can still go back and do all those quests.

But that is the intent of the fiction. That things aren't as bad as they were and he is not a monstrous Lich King. He's actually trying to keep everybody chill. There won't be any major crazy new Scourge attacks... for some time. But the Scourge operating in Plaguelands, it's more helpful to look at them as autonomous. Although, we haven't really dug out a lot of lore to substantiate that. "How are they autonomous?" "Who's driving these critters?" "Zombies don't have free will."
DK: Well certainly as Arthas' power waned, he lost control of the Forsaken. So we got a new Lich King getting his feet wet.
CM: Totally. (BlizzCon2011)

Bolvar was too weak of a LK to do anything other than put them to sleep. Like the TNG episode "Best of Both Worlds", sleep is a simple command. Maybe he's more powerful now, but seems like he wants his undead army to stick around.

That's a good way to look at it. I remember, when Ner'zhul was first made Lich King, it took him ages before he was strong enough to do much.

- - - Updated - - -

Scarlet Crusade could quite possibly be in the mix. I mean we did raise Whitemane and that could quite literally throw a cat amongst the pigeons. Time will tell.

I could see Whitemane bringing the Scarlet Crusade into the Alliance, partly by force, partly out of the Scarlet's desperation to continue existing. It would be hypocritical, morally grey at best, but with a new Lich King and Vellen's prophecy of a Lich King far worse than Arthas, it could easily be defended as necessary.

Meanwhile, this would finally give a reason for the Horde and Alliance to really have at one another. The Scarlets want to eradicate the Forsaken, who are leading the Horde now, this puts the Alliance on a collision course with the Horde.


As peace begins to slowly form between the Horde and Alliance (aside from the idiotic Worgen vs Forsaken nonsense we're being fed at the moment), the Scarlets being inducted into the Alliance is the perfect slap in the face to keep the animosity going.

[Zandalariprelate]

Oh, then that's dumb and Bolvar is dumb.

Kel'thuzad needs to rally the Cult of the Damned and easily wrest control of the Northrend Scourge from a paladin with no experience with necromancy. It's comparable to a baby with a gun vs. a guy super experienced with like all forms of martial arts. That baby can do some damage, but first he needs to gain the muscle and brain development to actually know how to pull a trigger, and to know that that would actually hurt the guy. And Bolvar is the baby.

Make the Scourge Great Again.

Something I'd like to see would be for the Scarlet Crusade to make a comeback (but not be immediately stomped back into the mud), like our honorable tactics of fighting the Scourge don't work (because there's like no reason whatsoever why fighting honorably against an honorless foe should yield better results than the Scarlet Crusade's much more effective solution) and we end up working for a slightly less xenophobic Crusade (only just barely tolerant enough to not murder the non-human races), like those who were meeting for cooperation at Light's Hope Chapel, sent by Abbendis, back in Vanilla.

I want the Scarlet Crusade back. In my opinion, they were the greatest loss in the Cataclysm revamp. It makes the Plaguelands feel so much more empty with the bland, boring Argent Crusade holding everything and doing very little exciting stuff. And then attacking Tyr's Hand and apparently easily conquering it from the Risen Scarlet Crusaders with pretty much zero effort. It should have been a long campaign and siege, like the Death Knight starting experience. That was a much more believable and satisfying attack. Not "you're here in this awesome city that's so underused, now kill three named mobs, and 5 unnamed generic mobs. Okay, cool, now we won, go ahead and get out of here now."

The scarlet crusade is now part of the ebon blande since in the campaign of the four horsemen we raid for the last time to the monastery to kill every crusader until the last and raise them as ghouls and maybe some of them were raised as dk in off screen and now Whitemane after learn about the Scarlets being controlled by a dreadlord since the beginning, is kinda hard to make them come back. For Bolvar part his awakening was very recently and it looks like he has become more evil and the helm is influence in him with his "visions". I wont be surprised if the end of legion we use bolvar and the rest of the scourge as kamikaze to blow up Argus since at some point the dk will get rid of him and decide to destroy all the undead once in for all since bolvar is starting to embarrase the little reputation of the ebon blade had with the rest of the world

[Evangeliste]

I could see Whitemane bringing the Scarlet Crusade into the Alliance, partly by force, partly out of the Scarlet's desperation to continue existing. It would be hypocritical, morally grey at best, but with a new Lich King and Vellen's prophecy of a Lich King far worse than Arthas, it could easily be defended as necessary.

Meanwhile, this would finally give a reason for the Horde and Alliance to really have at one another. The Scarlets want to eradicate the Forsaken, who are leading the Horde now, this puts the Alliance on a collision course with the Horde.


As peace begins to slowly form between the Horde and Alliance (aside from the idiotic Worgen vs Forsaken nonsense we're being fed at the moment), the Scarlets being inducted into the Alliance is the perfect slap in the face to keep the animosity going.

That's actually quite interesting and returns the game back to its roots. I didn't think about the Scarlet Crusade coming to join the alliance though they are priests to maybe escape Whitemane and could cause a real conflict since some of the Scarlet Crusade have become undeath.

(I have to say I did like the Worgen vs Forsaken thing, was a nice twist to a common rivalry, but could have more tuning after the whole Genn incident and Eyir).

[Aquamonkey]

I wouldn't call him weak.

Arthas spent at least 4+ years asleep in ice before Wrath, now after around the same amount of time Bolvar is stretching his legs

Arthas had Ner'zhul to teach him all about necromancy and LK powers.

[Oneirophobia]

The scarlet crusade is now part of the ebon blande since in the campaign of the four horsemen we raid for the last time to the monastery to kill every crusader until the last and raise them as ghouls and maybe some of them were raised as dk in off screen and now Whitemane after learn about the Scarlets being controlled by a dreadlord since the beginning, is kinda hard to make them come back. For Bolvar part his awakening was very recently and it looks like he has become more evil and the helm is influence in him with his "visions". I wont be surprised if the end of legion we use bolvar and the rest of the scourge as kamikaze to blow up Argus since at some point the dk will get rid of him and decide to destroy all the undead once in for all since bolvar is starting to embarrase the little reputation of the ebon blade had with the rest of the world

Are you sure? On my priest I went and brought a big chunk of the Scarlet Crusade into the priest order hall.

[Evangeliste]

Are you sure? On my priest I went and brought a big chunk of the Scarlet Crusade into the priest order hall.

That's what I wondered about. Still they have a lot of room to magically pop up Scarlet Crusade elsewhere or other things.

[chr2]

I could see Whitemane bringing the Scarlet Crusade into the Alliance, partly by force, partly out of the Scarlet's desperation to continue existing. It would be hypocritical, morally grey at best, but with a new Lich King and Vellen's prophecy of a Lich King far worse than Arthas, it could easily be defended as necessary.

Meanwhile, this would finally give a reason for the Horde and Alliance to really have at one another. The Scarlets want to eradicate the Forsaken, who are leading the Horde now, this puts the Alliance on a collision course with the Horde.


As peace begins to slowly form between the Horde and Alliance (aside from the idiotic Worgen vs Forsaken nonsense we're being fed at the moment), the Scarlets being inducted into the Alliance is the perfect slap in the face to keep the animosity going.

And how would that make for a better, more believable story than the current Worgen vs Forsaken conflict? A small religiously zealous faction, formerly hostile to everyone (the Alliance included), is allowed entry into the Alliance and somehow manages to convince the entire faction to resume their war efforts with the Horde... Yeah, I don't think so. IF the Scarlets were to join the Alliance, they would be distrusted and kept on a short leash, and have nowhere near the political power required to push the Alliance in that direction. Heck, at this point the Alliance is probably more trusting of the Horde than they'd be the Scarlet Crusade (save for the Gilneans obviously).