So arthas was never holding back, the scourge was just weak?

[Accendor]

Ra-den is hardly "next to nothing" alone.

Also you're ignoring the quests specifically in Uldum where you have to collect dog tags from corpses, or you know the one where you have to drag infested corpses into the fire. Or how about Vale, where you can clearly see that there's tons of Pandaren captured? Unless you think you save every single one somehow, which is unrealistic.

You are right about Raden. Thats actually relevant.
All the rest? Barely nothing still.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

And? Chronicles clearly state that he could have died in that battle

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Maybe you should read the Chronicles themselves?
''It might have spellend the end of the Lich King''
And after that, the intervention of the Forsaken is already described.

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''It might have spellend the end of the Lich King''
And after that, the intervention of the Forsaken is already described.

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- This page states that the Lich King knew that if the Alliance and Horde came to him full strength they can sweep away the Scourge. That is why he came to the Wrath Gate. To stop the Alliance and the Horde. It also states that the Alliance and Horde did not flinch after his appearance.

- This page states that this battle could have been the end of the Lich King.

You shouldn’t directly link that site it’s liable to get you infracted for promoting piracy.

But to the actual point the end in question In full context is laid out two pages before above the picture where it says the alliance and horde with the confidence of the win could sweep the scourge away.

[Jester Joe]

And? Chronicles clearly state that he could have died in that battle

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Maybe you should read the Chronicles themselves?

''It might have spellend the end of the Lich King''
And after that, the intervention of the Forsaken is already described.

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''It might have spellend the end of the Lich King''
And after that, the intervention of the Forsaken is already described.

Now read the page before that, don't cherry pick.

"Before the combined might of Azeroth's defenders, the Scourge's lines buckled. Slowly, Bolvar and Dranosh cleaved their way to the foot of the Wrath Gate. Victory seemed within reach, but the Lich King could not allow his enemies to prevail. His plan to convert the Horde and the ALlianc'es champions to his side would succeed only if both factions were war-weary and exhausted by the time they arrived at the Frozen Throne. Should they come brimming with confidence and in a position of power, they might very well sweep away the Scourge entirely."


AKA- If they won there, they would have continued on a clean path right up to the Lich King and killed him in ICC. Not right at Wrathgate. "it might have spelled the end of the Lich King" can be taken several ways, one is which that the situation unfolding would lead to his demise.

And I mean, if you want to try to take it literally, the book describes Bolvar as killed from the plague which isn't true either.

[cuafpr]

the attacks are at cities meaning you have reservers, and militias called up to help that would not have been there for the siege of Org 2.0. Also in pre-WotLK even they took over cities and surrounding towns not exactly week. Now lets add in how many more years to study the plague of undeath for better/faster protection as well so it makes sense it would be a bit weaker. Lore in WoW is not as broken as people claim sure stuff is retcon but so is real human history.... it happens.

[Jester Joe]

You are right about Raden. Thats actually relevant.
All the rest? Barely nothing still.

In-game portrayal doesn't exactly do justice though. It's like how the population of cities looks small in game, but it's really far higher than that.

Same goes for this case, if corpses are being shown and having to be handled, then the situation has to be pretty bad.

[darkoms]

Now read the page before that, don't cherry pick.

"Before the combined might of Azeroth's defenders, the Scourge's lines buckled. Slowly, Bolvar and Dranosh cleaved their way to the foot of the Wrath Gate. Victory seemed within reach, but the Lich King could not allow his enemies to prevail. His plan to convert the Horde and the ALlianc'es champions to his side would succeed only if both factions were war-weary and exhausted by the time they arrived at the Frozen Throne. Should they come brimming with confidence and in a position of power, they might very well sweep away the Scourge entirely."


AKA- If they won there, they would have continued on a clean path right up to the Lich King and killed him in ICC. Not right at Wrathgate. "it might have spelled the end of the Lich King" can be taken several ways, one is which that the situation unfolding would lead to his demise.

And I mean, if you want to try to take it literally, the book describes Bolvar as killed from the plague which isn't true either.

So you're saying that the Lich King will simply flee back to Icecrown if the Alliance and Horde defeat all of his powers at the Wrathgate? Okay, then what's the difference? I'm trying to show you that he's not as strong as you think. If not for the intervention of the Forsaken, he would either have fled from there and the Alliance and Horde destroyed all his forces in this place, or he would have stayed and he would have simply been overwhelmed by the crowd. Even a demigod can be killed if he fights at once against a huge army.
And yes, the Alliance and Hordes not drained by the long war can defeat the Scourge. I have also spoken about this many times. Don't overestimate the Scourge. Arthas's plan was on the brink of failure twice - after Naxxrams and at the Wrathgate.
And so what we have:
1. Arthas knows that he cannot take over the world by force and therefore he needs heroes (Chronicles 3)
2. The Alliance and Horde are stronger than the Scourge (Chronicle 3)
3. Arthas, realizing that he has no chance in an open war, decides to lure the heroes to himself and win with their help. Even so, his plan is on the verge of failure twice:
1) After Naxxramas due to the death of KelThuzad, but he was saved by the intervention of Malygos (Chronicles 3)
2) At the Gates of Wrath, when Arthas realizes that the Alliance and Horde are moving too quickly to his lands and they will come to him full of strength, not tired and exhausted and decides to go out to fight personally and even so he would either die or flee, allowing the Alliance and the Horde to advance (and further boost their morale if he showed them that even he could flee the battlefield in front of their combined forces), but he was saved by the intervention of the Forsaken (Chronicle 3).
And after that, does anyone still consider the Scourge a threat? At the same time, you must remember that the Alliance and the Horde at the same time fought with the Aspect of Magic and the blue flock, with the Old God and his servants, spent their forces on the Siege of the Undercity to stop the Legion's plans and at the same time fought with each other. That's why Arthas' plan continued to work at all. If the Alliance and Horde were to fully focus their forces on the Scourge, and not be distracted by other (much more dangerous) threats, the war would end very quickly. As I've said a million times. The Scourge is overrated. The Lich King is overrated.

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You shouldn’t directly link that site it’s liable to get you infracted for promoting piracy.

But to the actual point the end in question In full context is laid out two pages before above the picture where it says the alliance and horde with the confidence of the win could sweep the scourge away.

Hmm, right? I did this several times and no one told me that it was prohibited. So I have to give a link because I cannot just copy and paste, this is not text, but just pictures with text.

I know, I've already said this and gave you a link to the page where it says.

[aceperson]

my best guess is that the prepatch event is about holding off the scourge, not defeating them. then we go into the shadowlands to defeat the jailer and in the process we get a new helm of domination to make a new lich king. i mean we do have access to the guy that made the original in shadowlands. the only thing we would need is a way to get back which is what the jailer is preventing.

[darkoms]

Now read the page before that, don't cherry pick.

"Before the combined might of Azeroth's defenders, the Scourge's lines buckled. Slowly, Bolvar and Dranosh cleaved their way to the foot of the Wrath Gate. Victory seemed within reach, but the Lich King could not allow his enemies to prevail. His plan to convert the Horde and the ALlianc'es champions to his side would succeed only if both factions were war-weary and exhausted by the time they arrived at the Frozen Throne. Should they come brimming with confidence and in a position of power, they might very well sweep away the Scourge entirely."


AKA- If they won there, they would have continued on a clean path right up to the Lich King and killed him in ICC. Not right at Wrathgate. "it might have spelled the end of the Lich King" can be taken several ways, one is which that the situation unfolding would lead to his demise.

And I mean, if you want to try to take it literally, the book describes Bolvar as killed from the plague which isn't true either.

What does it mean is not true?
The sentence from the Ultimate Visual Guides, "The flames of the red dragonflight had reanimated Bolvar after Angrathar"[43] alone would imply that Bolvar died and was brought back to life, implying he's undead. However, in the books it is also stated that, in fact, Bolvar was "kept at the edge of life",[citation needed] meaning he did not die. This is supported by another sentence a bit further: "Thought to have been killed by the plague at the battle of the Wrathgate, Bolvar was saved but charred beyond recognition."[44]

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Hmm, right? I did this several times and no one told me that it was prohibited. So I have to give a link because I cannot just copy and paste, this is not text, but just pictures with text.

I know, I've already said this and gave you a link to the page where it says.

Might just be different mods then I had got a warning at one point for using it. Though you can actually copy the pages them self and post them as images I do it quite often though I try and avoid using any of the pages with the promo at the bottom.

[Heartbreaker23]

I can't really understand the decision to bring back so many bosses from the wotlk raid. The general consensus about the lich king seems that we need one so the scourge doesen't run rampart and kill everything and that we only stood a chance back in Wotlk because Arthas was holding back but this makes no sense to me now. If so many bosses have returned I think its safe to assume that the scourge basically is back at the same powerlevel as they were in Wotlk, and now that there is no lich king the scourge is actually running rampart and killing everything. What happened to the whole "We only have enough men for one final assault" that anduin said right before siege of orgrimmar 2.0? Surely we lost even more troops to Nzoth? How do we defeat a full powered scourge then? Magical poof, here is an army.

Kinda undermines and makes the scourge look pathetic. I could have gotten it if we still had our artifact weapons or literally anything else but we just recovered from a world war and a fight with a full powered old god but somehow we can fight a scourge that has been amassing forces since wotlk and has resurrected many of its commanders.

meh they even forgot that Kel'thuzad still had his phylactery but somehow ended up in the shadowlands

Who did they bring back?

[Aerisot]

The scourge will always have some type of leader, Plaguelands are a good indication of this.

The scourge there have no affiliation to Arthas/Bolvar anymore, but were still being controlled by the necromancers who were still loyal to the Lich King, the Line "There must always be a Lich King" came from a Dead man who has never seen the scourge outside the blade.

Another great example of this, are the original forsaken, they were freed of Arthas's control and regained their own wills when Arthas went too far north, so to say that the remaining Scourge would go rampant with the Lich King gone is nonsense, if anything they are being controlled by someone or something else.

[Heartbreaker23]

If you're going to try and bring logic into a video game

Video games are created by people and if they want people to care about the story, then the story needs to be created logically

It's fine to say "we needed this character to win" but it still needs to be done logically.

You can't have a fight between a nobody and a powerful entity and have the nobody defeat the powerful guy with one punch without any explanation at all.

[Stormspellz]

I can't really understand the decision to bring back so many bosses from the wotlk raid. The general consensus about the lich king seems that we need one so the scourge doesen't run rampart and kill everything and that we only stood a chance back in Wotlk because Arthas was holding back but this makes no sense to me now. If so many bosses have returned I think its safe to assume that the scourge basically is back at the same powerlevel as they were in Wotlk, and now that there is no lich king the scourge is actually running rampart and killing everything. What happened to the whole "We only have enough men for one final assault" that anduin said right before siege of orgrimmar 2.0? Surely we lost even more troops to Nzoth? How do we defeat a full powered scourge then? Magical poof, here is an army.

Kinda undermines and makes the scourge look pathetic. I could have gotten it if we still had our artifact weapons or literally anything else but we just recovered from a world war and a fight with a full powered old god but somehow we can fight a scourge that has been amassing forces since wotlk and has resurrected many of its commanders.

meh they even forgot that Kel'thuzad still had his phylactery but somehow ended up in the shadowlands

it seems you are confusing player gameplay and lore canon, we are seeing the scourge run feral as is expected after the helm got destroyed and we as players always have the unbreakable plot armor. Which leads to..

Don't forget laser spaceships that have been parked offscreen since Legion.

MAGIC laser spaceships.

our almighty plot armor, had us somehow beat an endless army that includes armadas of magicial star destroyers that we killed with little pointy things- the lore either canon or in game has been thrown out the window for some time.

[Jester Joe]

So you're saying that the Lich King will simply flee back to Icecrown if the Alliance and Horde defeat all of his powers at the Wrathgate? Okay, then what's the difference? I'm trying to show you that he's not as strong as you think. If not for the intervention of the Forsaken, he would either have fled from there and the Alliance and Horde destroyed all his forces in this place, or he would have stayed and he would have simply been overwhelmed by the crowd. Even a demigod can be killed if he fights at once against a huge army.
And yes, the Alliance and Hordes not drained by the long war can defeat the Scourge. I have also spoken about this many times. Don't overestimate the Scourge. Arthas's plan was on the brink of failure twice - after Naxxrams and at the Wrathgate.
And so what we have:
1. Arthas knows that he cannot take over the world by force and therefore he needs heroes (Chronicles 3)
2. The Alliance and Horde are stronger than the Scourge (Chronicle 3)
3. Arthas, realizing that he has no chance in an open war, decides to lure the heroes to himself and win with their help. Even so, his plan is on the verge of failure twice:
1) After Naxxramas due to the death of KelThuzad, but he was saved by the intervention of Malygos (Chronicles 3)
2) At the Gates of Wrath, when Arthas realizes that the Alliance and Horde are moving too quickly to his lands and they will come to him full of strength, not tired and exhausted and decides to go out to fight personally and even so he would either die or flee, allowing the Alliance and the Horde to advance (and further boost their morale if he showed them that even he could flee the battlefield in front of their combined forces), but he was saved by the intervention of the Forsaken (Chronicle 3).
And after that, does anyone still consider the Scourge a threat? At the same time, you must remember that the Alliance and the Horde at the same time fought with the Aspect of Magic and the blue flock, with the Old God and his servants, spent their forces on the Siege of the Undercity to stop the Legion's plans and at the same time fought with each other. That's why Arthas' plan continued to work at all. If the Alliance and Horde were to fully focus their forces on the Scourge, and not be distracted by other (much more dangerous) threats, the war would end very quickly. As I've said a million times. The Scourge is overrated. The Lich King is overrated.

I mean, even if the Lich King was capable of cleaving the planet in half it's ultimately irrelevant because he's dead (Arthas version at least) either way and the point was the threat of the Scourge.

I get the angle you're coming from, it's not about overestimating though. I just don't agree with the portrayal you're putting it as. Arthas did hold back the Scourge because he wanted to lure in the strongest champions to turn him to his side. That would have been his best chance to win. And honestly, without Tirion's sudden break out of the ice block, he would have.

But past that, the whole "There must always been a Lich King" is pretty obvious for the time I'd say. Both the Horde and Alliance were in delicate spots. If the Scourge went ballistic right there, they would have had losses having to retreat from Northrend in general. Sure, long term the Alliance and Horde would have won out possibly, but it wouldn't be some easy win, it would be devastating still and then the Legion could have just easily came in and cleaned up. Or well, Deathwing would have happened first.

Basically, while I agree that the Scourge could have been cleared out, I don't agree that you're making them sound like it would have been a joke. Especially with the way everything did unfold. Even where the Lich King did screw up, he did also succeed in weakening both factions and sowing the seeds of discontent between them.


I mean, also to tack on past that, worth noting that the Scourge was also used to a degree to fight the Legion in regards to the Death Knight campaign as far as I recall, or at least the powers of the Lich King were, so it's also understandable why Bolvar didn't just march all of them off a cliff into their death since they could still be used in the defense of Azeroth.

[Satelliteyears0o]

I can't really understand the decision to bring back so many bosses from the wotlk raid. The general consensus about the lich king seems that we need one so the scourge doesen't run rampart and kill everything and that we only stood a chance back in Wotlk because Arthas was holding back but this makes no sense to me now. If so many bosses have returned I think its safe to assume that the scourge basically is back at the same powerlevel as they were in Wotlk, and now that there is no lich king the scourge is actually running rampart and killing everything. What happened to the whole "We only have enough men for one final assault" that anduin said right before siege of orgrimmar 2.0? Surely we lost even more troops to Nzoth? How do we defeat a full powered scourge then? Magical poof, here is an army.

Kinda undermines and makes the scourge look pathetic. I could have gotten it if we still had our artifact weapons or literally anything else but we just recovered from a world war and a fight with a full powered old god but somehow we can fight a scourge that has been amassing forces since wotlk and has resurrected many of its commanders.

meh they even forgot that Kel'thuzad still had his phylactery but somehow ended up in the shadowlands

powerlvls arent relative to expansions or our lvls. What was dangerous then, would be dangerous now when updated to live content as u saw with uldum and valley of eternal blossoms in 8.3.

Arthas wanted to weed the strongest of us out, and turn us so we would serve his purpose which was the jailers purpose.

[matrix123mko]

The assumption wasn't that the Scourge would be stronger, but yet rampaging.

So what? Isn't it better to eradicate them while we are still in Northrend?

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I didn't really see Terenas' quote as saying the Scourge was stronger, per se; just more chaotic and uncontrolled as in a more direct and immediate threat.

I think chaotic and uncontrolled Scourge is more predictable than one lead by a tactician.

[Mehrunes]

Ra-den is hardly "next to nothing" alone.

Also you're ignoring the quests specifically in Uldum where you have to collect dog tags from corpses, or you know the one where you have to drag infested corpses into the fire. Or how about Vale, where you can clearly see that there's tons of Pandaren captured? Unless you think you save every single one somehow, which is unrealistic.

The less Pandaren there are, the lower the chances Azeroth will have to go through another "my people have suffered more than any other" bullshit trial that ends with lol-wisdom from the Celestials and the bad guy escaping, only to invade the world with an ass-pull army.

[Teaon]

there is a video of the late great Stan Lee and in it he discusses what his response is every time someone asked him the question "who would win in a fight: X or Y?" and his answer was quite simple: "whoever the writers needed to win! If you have a fight between Wolverine and the Hulk and Wolverine needs to win, then he wins. If you have a fight between Kingpin and Captain America and Kingpin needs to win, then he wins."

If you're going to try and bring logic into a video game where, at the end of the day, we have to win then that's never going to work. As someone mentioned above, Sargeras was right there above Azeroth and could've destroyed it at any moment. But the Pantheon stopped him JUST in time. Why? Because we had to win. Same thing for Arthas and the Scourge, both then and now.

Part of a good writing is having a good reasonable logic for X defeat Y, instead of deus ex machina, sure its what a writer want, but it shouldn't be "it is what it is" but should be "he was able to win because this, that, there and those".

[Blodia]

Back at you, "don't go there". They didn't use their artillery. I am not interested in meta reasons. The fact is they had cannons, but choose to use siege towers to get to the walls instead of just use artillery to blow up said walls, which were decrepit and ruined.

The thing is there are no reasons other than writer fiat that are in any way conceivable or reasonable within the setting. In fact if you visit Tirisfal Glades you will see several large siege cannons and artillery units parked at the Alliance landing. Mortar-like things, cannons, i think even one of those huge masonry tanks you see in hellfire peninsula.
But then siege towers and infantry rush. No in-world reason for that which won't blow up your suspension of disbelief (see: they can't really be THIS retarded), which means it's all writer fiat like goblins casually not using azerite gundams later in the expansion, vindicaar just chillin in high orbit or weird fluctuations of available manpower for both factions. It's all crude and heavy handed writing done by people who can't create a coherent war story or even maintain a setting.

[darkoms]

I mean, even if the Lich King was capable of cleaving the planet in half it's ultimately irrelevant because he's dead (Arthas version at least) either way and the point was the threat of the Scourge.

I get the angle you're coming from, it's not about overestimating though. I just don't agree with the portrayal you're putting it as. Arthas did hold back the Scourge because he wanted to lure in the strongest champions to turn him to his side. That would have been his best chance to win. And honestly, without Tirion's sudden break out of the ice block, he would have.

But past that, the whole "There must always been a Lich King" is pretty obvious for the time I'd say. Both the Horde and Alliance were in delicate spots. If the Scourge went ballistic right there, they would have had losses having to retreat from Northrend in general. Sure, long term the Alliance and Horde would have won out possibly, but it wouldn't be some easy win, it would be devastating still and then the Legion could have just easily came in and cleaned up. Or well, Deathwing would have happened first.

Basically, while I agree that the Scourge could have been cleared out, I don't agree that you're making them sound like it would have been a joke. Especially with the way everything did unfold. Even where the Lich King did screw up, he did also succeed in weakening both factions and sowing the seeds of discontent between them.


I mean, also to tack on past that, worth noting that the Scourge was also used to a degree to fight the Legion in regards to the Death Knight campaign as far as I recall, or at least the powers of the Lich King were, so it's also understandable why Bolvar didn't just march all of them off a cliff into their death since they could still be used in the defense of Azeroth.

So why argue that he could have died there?

Disagree with my point of view? This is exactly what I am saying. That he wanted to lure the heroes and take over the world with their help, not that he wanted to contain the Scourge because there was still something good in it.

That's right, that's why the Lich King is needed. Not because the Scourge could kill everyone.

Again. The Alliance and Horde consistently defeated the Scourge, and Arthas' plan nearly failed twice, despite being constantly distracted by other threats and each other. Many people here cite the achievements of the Scourge from Warcraft 3, showing how tough this army was then. But now? When did the books and Chronicles show us what really happened? We can see that the Scourge has never been scary. The Scourge destroyed Lordaeron due to a surprise attack and shock from the prince's betrayal (Chronicle 3 and Arthas book). The Scourge destroyed Quel'Thalas due to Dark'Khan's betrayal and Sylvanas' stupidity (Chronicles 3 and Blood of the Highborne and Arthas: Rise of the Lich King) The Scourge could not even take Dalaran by force and only won because, thanks to Kel'Thuzad's knowledge of the city, a small detachment led by Arthas and Kel'Thuzad was able to go a secret path and reach Antonidas without breaking through the city (Chronicle 3).

Yes, Bolvar allocated some forces (even frost wyrms) to fight the Legion, but what does that have to do with it? All Azeroth fought demons. Ancient and wild gods, titan-forged and Guardians, elementals and their Lords. Everyone fought demons.