Culling of Stratholme: why have I to save Arthas?

[Unionoob]

well.. if we wouldn't help Arthas with Stratholme we would see Schourge till Stormwind gate, I am sure demons would find someone else to help them with Archemonde summoning.. I bet they would get Jayna or even self Sylvanas to be scourge leader..
eh.. there could happen so much shit if he dies.. and at same time could have happened many good too.. one of good.. we wouldn't have to wait 10 mins while he talks before we can start event :P

[Mordin Solus]

well this topic falls under several timeline theories.

one of them is that by altering the time-line u will create a diferent dimention in wich in this case arthas was not the lich king...but since it is a diferent dimension your future cannont be altered and your arthas will become the lich king so yay for people in other dimension but we still prety much #"$#"$ed up

another theory is that by altering the time-line it will have a direct efect on your future but thats where the problem comes at hand. if u alter the past there is 2 possibilities
a)you cease to exist as a consequence for certain events not hapening leading to your birth (night elves may be not included since they were imortal and could be around from before arthas was even born but may still be dead due to another phenom) wich in some way makes u unable to even alter the past to begin with;
b) the world implodes.

other theory is that time cant be changed. everythin was predestined even if u refused to help arthas there would be somethin that would help him and the future would hapen as it is as lets say you try to prevent some1s death although u know he will die lets say squished by a piano. even if u removed said person from the trajectory of said piano, said person would still die, lets say by a car that was comin from behind you both or or the person has a heart atack. point is the future will hapen no way to escape it

[DrgnDancer]

Simply put, it's the Butterfly Effect. You can't predict how changing the past might impact the timeline. Arthas (As a regular Knight Knight, before the Frozen Throne expansion stuff) sided with the Lich King in his resistance to the Burning Legion. His actions against the Legion were small, but perhaps not inconsequential. Maybe had he not been corrupted the Legion would have won. That would be worse than the current situation. Maybe Illidan would have become an even worse threat had he not been prevented from destroying the Frozen Throne. Maybe if Arthas had died at Strat, it would have driven Jania mad, and she'd have become the Champion of the Lich King, and eventually the Lich Queen herself. She's something approaching a match for Arthas as things are now (she took about a third of his HPs in HoR and numerically took more of his than he took of hers), maybe she would have been an even more terrifying opponent. It's a truism and SciFi/Fantasy Lit that just becasue timelines *can* be changed doesn't mean they'll make thing better. Not matter how much it may seem so at the time.

Same with the Black Morass. Stopping the Orc invasion might have prevented all the troubles that followed, or it might have cleared the way for the Legion to win some other way. Certainly from the point of view of Horde players, preventing the invasion of Azeroth would have spelled the doom of the Orcs. If you've read "Rise of the Horde" you know that Draenor was dying, and the Orcs had a few years left at most before the end. Even from the point of view of Alliance players there's no way of knowing what worse plan the Legion may have hit upon had they not been able to use the Orcs.

[AnotherPaladin]

Illidian would be too powerful had he killed Arthas. His power level may even exceed that of 9,000. Try killing that.

[Powerogue]

it's not entirely impossible the lich king may've choosen a stronger paladin when arthas died, and one that WOULDN'T kick him out of his own suit of armor and take over. leaving us with probably overall a stronger lich king.

plus arthas convinced illidan to take the skull of gul'dan away from the burning legion, depriving them of a serious source of power, and probably swayed the effect of the nordrassil war.

that's all i've got. ??? this one stumped me as much as the zero visible impact of the infinite dragonflight at hyjal.


i've got a plot device going now!

illidan and arthas fight at the frozen throne, illidan wins.

illidan then goes up to the top of the frozen throne and blows the lich king to tiny shards, eliminating this petty rebel to the powers of the burning legion.

illidan and the burning legion get buddy-buddy here, as he is now firmly trusted by them, and he becomes their powerful luitenanant, above kazzack.

instead of illidan and the burning legion bickering with each other while we butchered both separately during last expansion, their combined efforts would've annihilated the alliance offensive at the portal, and succeeded in summoning Kil'jaeden.

oh, you think you can make a difference now? try getting to outland without access to that portal. the burning legion have a full stranglehold on outland, and swarm into azeroth by the millions from both the dark portal, and a new portal formed from the sunwell after kil'jaeden crawled out.

biggest burning legion invasion in history, we all die.

the end. 8)

[Asur]

You have to Save Arthas, because it is ultimately Arthas who stops the Scourge from taking over the world.

When Arthas is a Death Knight, he does a whole ton of horrible things - but when Ner'zhul makes the mistake of trying to take over Arthas' body, he simply expects to have a new body.

He's wrong.

In Arthas' mind, Arthas beats Ner'zhul and ultimately puts to a halt all the advances of the Scourge and recalls the majority of the Scourge forces back to Northrend.

No, Ner'zhul was not trying to "take" over his body.