Originally Posted by
KrazyK923
Its blatantly clear they're setting up Vol'jin to become Warchief.
I used to like Thrall, a lot.
Now he just seems to be a deus ex machina for the Horde. "Oh shit, Garrosh is doing bad stuff? Get Thrall! He'll save the day and free the Darkspears!"
---------- Post added 2012-11-16 at 10:45 AM ----------
1.) He isn't just a developer. He's the head of the creative development team.
2.) Nobody calls Varian a Mary Sue because he isn't one. He had character progression. Both in the games and in secondary lore material (The books, the comics, short stories, ect). Thrall has always been the same. They tried to make it seem like they gave him some grand character development with his Cataclysm quest chain, but they really didn't. He's exactly the same at his core, he's just called a different name and isn't leading the Horde any more. Varian goes from being a mediocre King to a Gladiator with Amnesia to a moody King who's inner-being is all screwed up to an awkward father to his son to a fierce warrior to the Alliance to finally a balanced person again. And it didn't take one quest chain to do so. They are all very different incarnations of Varian at the core of his character. And it took multiple expansions for it to happen, it wasn't foisted upon us in one quest chain in one expansion.
Metzen is Thrall. Thrall is Metzen. Metzen feels like Thrall, Thrall feels like Metzen. Metzen constantly talks about how amazing Thrall is and what he's up to. Varian (And the Alliance as a whole, frankly), are only really talked about when people ask about the obvious factional bias in WoW, and they (The cdevs) put their lobbyist hats on and pretend they are as psyched about the Alliance as they are Horde.
No offense, but you might want to learn what a Mary Sue character actually is. Just because a character is given large amounts of screen time does not mean they are a Mary Sue.
Varian came out of a result of a need for an Alliance hero who wasn't sitting on his ass doing nothing (Tyrande, Magni), off given some bogus fake "assignment" that requires their attention (Gelbin), or someone who seems purposefully regulated to a minor character role because Blizzard doesn't know what to do with him (Velen).
And no, we didn't see as much of Varian as Thrall, because he did not exist as a legitimate character (Not a placeholder character on Alcaz Island) until Wrath. And even in Wrath, he's involved in one quest chain, opposite of Thrall.
Cataclysm was Thrallaclysm. I don't care what Blizzard tries to convince people of, Thrall is a Horde character. He's always been a Horde character, since his inception. Since Warcraft 3, Frozen Throne, Vanilla, BC, and Wrath. Just because they suddenly remove him from the Horde doesn't mean he's not a Horde character.