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

[Verdugo]

Ghouls and Abombinations don't, certainly - but Geists, Necromancers, Liches, and Banshees are all examples of fully intelligent undead able to make their own decisions. Ditto for undead Nerubians, Shades, and Frost Wyrms. Even some skeletons are intelligent, like Mordresh Fire Eye or Obrahiim the Traveler.

Those dont exactly fit the definition of leaderless scourge, right?



Anyway, this is all pointless because everyone and ESPECIALY BLIZZARD forget what happened last time Lich King lost control.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Yes, only after defeating the Wrathgate would they still have to break through and then lay siege to Icecrown and fight Arthas. Between their victory at the Wrathgate and their confrontation with Arthas himself at the top of his fortress, many things could have happened. So your argument doesn't work. This quote refers to the Battle of the Wrathgate, why would she even relate to anything that POSSIBLY happens in the future. You just don't want to admit the obvious and try to come up with incredible theories.

What theories? It’s laid out in the book a page above the one in question it’s not something I made up.

[darkoms]

What theories? It’s laid out in the book a page above the one in question it’s not something I made up.

This page states that this particular battle may have meant the end of the Lich King and that it is said ONLY AFTER THE PERSONAL KING APPEARED IN THIS BATTLE. Prior to this, it was not said that this battle was so important that after it the Alliance and Horde would have undoubtedly won.

[Aucald]

Those dont exactly fit the definition of leaderless scourge, right?



Anyway, this is all pointless because everyone and ESPECIALY BLIZZARD forget what happened last time Lich King lost control.

Don't fit the definition of leaderless Scourge in what sense? The Scourge only has one true leader in the form of the Lich King - when the Lich King is absent the rank and file of the Scourge run amok as per WC3: TFT and/or factionalize under stronger exemplars like powerful Liches or Necromancers.

As for everyone or Blizzard forgetting what happened - that doesn't really seem to be the case. The Shadowlands seems to be all about that, and is basically following the same general arc of what happened in WC3: TFT. Although in this case it seems to be somewhat mitigated by the fact that the Mawsworn actually seem to be more or less in control of the Scourge this time, at least to some degree.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

This page states that this particular battle may have meant the end of the Lich King and that it is said ONLY AFTER THE PERSONAL KING APPEARED IN THIS BATTLE. Prior to this, it was not said that this battle was so important that after it the Alliance and Horde would have undoubtedly won.

The page before that literally says that if the horde and alliance won the wrath gate they could have very well swept away the scourge intently and that the lich king couldn’t have that, it wasn’t him taking to the field that made the wrath gate important.

[Mehrunes]

Ghouls and Abombinations don't, certainly - but Geists, Necromancers, Liches, and Banshees are all examples of fully intelligent undead able to make their own decisions. Ditto for undead Nerubians, Shades, and Frost Wyrms. Even some skeletons are intelligent, like Mordresh Fire Eye or Obrahiim the Traveler.

Necromancers, Liches and Banshees are by your own admission not exactly the mindless variety of undead that would constitute the super serial "even greater threat". With Lich King flat out gone they should have outright broken free and went their merry Forsaken/Ebon Blade way, instead of just chaotically rampaging across the world.

It hasn't stopped the goblins, gnomes, dwarves and even blood elves and night elves of continuous developing new weaponry and tactical appliances.

Which wasn't even remotely the point of contestion.

[darkoms]

The page before that literally says that if the horde and alliance won the wrath gate they could have very well swept away the scourge intently and that the lich king couldn’t have that, it wasn’t him taking to the field that made the wrath gate important.

The end of the Lich King refers specifically to this battle, and it is only mentioned after the Lich King himself appears in this battle. Prior to his appearance, it is simply said that the Alliance and Horde are advancing too quickly and that if they come to him full of strength they will sweep away the Scourge. And not that if they win this particular battle, they will finally win.

[Aucald]

Necromancers, Liches and Banshees are by your own admission not exactly the mindless variety of undead that would constitute the super serial "even greater threat". With Lich King flat out gone they should have outright broken free and went their merry Forsaken/Ebon Blade way, instead of just chaotically rampaging across the world.

There are probably vastly more lesser undead compared to free-willed and intellgent greater undead, though. You would end up with any number of minor fiefdoms headed up by powerful Liches or Necromancers, and then the uncontrolled mass of lesser undead like Ghouls and Zombies just slaughtering indiscriminately and passively spreading the undead plague and other forms of pestilence.

Either way you dice it, it's not a great outcome as opposed to keeping them contained and constrained.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

The end of the Lich King refers specifically to this battle, and it is only mentioned after the Lich King himself appears in this battle. Prior to his appearance, it is simply said that the Alliance and Horde are advancing too quickly and that if they come to him full of strength they will sweep away the Scourge. And not that if they win this particular battle, they will finally win.

I don’t know about you but I’d say marching though the wrath gate united with a massive moral boost and then sweeping away the scourge would count as an end of the lichking.

[darkoms]

I don’t know about you but I’d say marching though the wrath gate united with a massive moral boost and then sweeping away the scourge would count as an end of the lichking.

Yes, that's just about the end of the Lich King was written only after he himself entered the battle. And don't you think that if this was related to the victory over the Scourge, they would write that this could be the end of the Scourge?

[Good ol Stroggylos]

Nzoth and his invasions are directed and follow a certain pattern. In an essence he is the one going for a guerrilla war striking key points with surgical accuracy. It's almost the same we did with argos invasion. Only difference is our forces had to face an all mighty Legion in their turf while Nzoth had to face a post world war force. This is a proof of how weak he is.
Arthas and the scourge were on a different lvl. As mentioned he had previously roamed easily through couple of kingdoms but annoyingly we always came back. He was holding back toying with us and essentially letting us go through his main door (and not through a side wall hole as we usually do last expansions) to get the best troops for his army and also break leadership morale. Essentially our win was a deus machina in the end. The scourge is a formidable force even without a leader, without someone bolstering their lines with even more strong subject and this prepatch proves it

[Shadowsgrace]

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

The whole point of the Scourge, was to gather Azeroth's greatest Heroes to defeat it, and ultimately turn those into Arthas (Lich King) Strongest DKs. Just didn't expect his Father's interference.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Yes, that's just about the end of the Lich King was written only after he himself entered the battle. And don't you think that if this was related to the victory over the Scourge, they would write that this could be the end of the Scourge?

Given that sweeping away the scourge would be ending the lichking And they don’t use any words like kill slay strike down ect, id say ending him means that they would follow through with what the lichking was trying to stop which was winning the wrath gate and marching on Icecrown. But at this point we’re just splitting hairs on wording.

[Mehrunes]

There are probably vastly more lesser undead compared to free-willed and intellgent greater undead, though. You would end up with any number of minor fiefdoms headed up by powerful Liches or Necromancers, and then the uncontrolled mass of lesser undead like Ghouls and Zombies just slaughtering indiscriminately and passively spreading the undead plague and other forms of pestilence.

Either way you dice it, it's not a great outcome as opposed to keeping them contained and constrained.

The number disparity between intelligent undead and the moronic ones (why are there moronic ones in the first place, given how even skeletons of Acherus broke free just fine when Arthas got turned into Ashbringer shish kebab for a moment is another issue) is immaterial.

The point is, the intelligent ones wouldn't be a part of the mindlessly rampaging chaotic mass by default, because being mindless is kind of a prerequisite for belonging in said mindless mass. And one can't be both an intelligent undead and a mindless one at the same time. As such, @Verdugo's point how the mindless "greater threat" mob (and just the mindless mob) would predictably keep going to "the nearest spot" remains (which, in turn, makes the notion that it'd be more dangerous than an undead army led by someone with a clue rather suspect).

Because even if the intelligent ones that regained their freedom started to exert their control over some of the mindless ones instead of writing memoirs or painting landscapes, the mindless ones that would be enthralled by them would also automatically stop being part of the mindlessly rampaging "even greater threat" as well. The moment they start being enthralled by the greater undead they stop being chaotic twerps and instead do what their new Lich/Banshee/San'layn master wants them to do.

At which point the question of whether uncontrolled undead are more dangerous than ones led by someone with a brain or not no longer applies to the particular group at all, because it's going to firmly belong in the latter category and as such is going to be the exact same kind of a threat as Arthas. Just on a smaller scale, automatically making it a smaller threat than Scourge under his leadership. And if there's more than one such group, they'll likely start fighting among each other for supremacy, further diminishing the threat they pose.

[Eapoe]

I mean, was any villain in the history of WoW ever really that "strong"? Because the way I remember, no matter how hard Blizzard tries to present a villain as a legitimate threat, we still roll over everyone and everything in the lore. Why would the Scourge be different?

P.S. Spoiler alert - we'll stomp the Jailer and whatever he's cooking in the Shadowlands as well Just wait

We’ve lost twice so far in the game lore. Arthas killed us and had won. Uther broke free and stunned LK long enough to revive us and finish him off.
N’zoth completely corrupted us. Only Magni and the HoA saved us.
We haven’t rolled over everything.

[Aucald]

The number disparity between intelligent undead and the moronic ones (why are there moronic ones in the first place, given how even skeletons of Acherus broke free just fine when Arthas got turned into Ashbringer shish kebab for a moment is another issue) is immaterial. The point is, the intelligent ones wouldn't be a part of the mindlessly rampaging chaotic mass by default, because being mindless is kind of a prerequisite for belonging in said mindless mass. And one can't be both an intelligent undead and a mindless one at the same time. As such, Verdugo's point how the mindless "greater threat" mob (and just the mindless mob) would predictably keep going to "the nearest spot" remains.

Because even if the intelligent ones that regained their freedom started to exert their control over some of the mindless ones instead of writing memoirs or painting landscapes, the mindless ones that would be enthralled by them would also automatically stop being part of the mindlessly rampaging "even greater threat" as well. The moment they start being enthralled by the greater undead they stop being chaotic twerps and instead do what their new Lich/Banshee/San'layn master wants them to do.

At which point the question of whether uncontrolled undead are more dangerous than ones led by someone with a brain or not no longer applies to the particular group at all, because it's going to firmly belong in the latter category and as such is going to be the exact same kind of a threat as Arthas. Just on a smaller scale, automatically making it a smaller threat than Scourge under his leadership. And if there's more than one such group, they'll likely start fighting among each other for supremacy, further diminishing the threat they pose.

Mindlessness alone isn't the only issue, though; the Scourge are also indelibly imprinted with a pathological hatred of life, and absent the direct will of the Lich King still follow the essential prime directive of the Scourge: kill the living and raise their dead as new Scourge. Banshees, Liches, and the like might be intelligent and more or less free-willed, but they generally follow the same imperatives even when the Lich King isn't directing their actions via domination. So it goes that even those lesser undead shackled to the greater undead leaders will follow the same M.O., and the "nearest spot" in this equation is going to be closest major population center of living beings, or Orgrimmar and Stormwind. The Scourge will go where the victims are.

I would agree a Scourge without a Lich king isn't as dangerous a direct threat, but in context (both in post-WotLK and now post-BfA) it's still not a great thing.

[Lord Pebbleton]

Final nail in the coffin for the Lich King-Scourge duo.

The deal with always needing a Lich King or the Scourge would go rampant always reeked of a last-minute excuse for having a possible new big bad lined up (Bolvar). Just standard "foot-in-the-door" Blizzard practice to justify rehashing characters and concepts.

The problem arises when even Blizzard treats their lore like it's just an excuse to make things happen. If the Scourge doesn't rightfully run rampant and kill everyone, or if we do not find another mega-powerful artifact to keep them in check again, then the whole WotLK aftermath makes absolutely zero fricking sense.

Think about it. If we had even the slightest chance of defeating a rampaging Scourge, people like Tirion would have devoted the rest of their life to annihilate the possibility of it happening. And yet, no one tried, because we were led to believe it was impossible to do so. The helm falls off, all life dies. Very straightforward.

But noooo. We are super weak after all the stupid BfA wars and the effort against N'zoth, and even in this horrible condition, the Scourge is unable to do exactly what it should do in this extremely specific occasion.

This is a consequence of Blizzard not respecting their own rules. Such a small thing has the potential to be the next horribly mishandled lore, right after the infinite Legion thing in WoD. And if something reminds me of WoD, I am very concerned about its development.

[darkoms]

Given that sweeping away the scourge would be ending the lichking And they don’t use any words like kill slay strike down ect, id say ending him means that they would follow through with what the lichking was trying to stop which was winning the wrath gate and marching on Icecrown. But at this point we’re just splitting hairs on wording.

Lol. The Chronicle states clearly. The end of the Lich King. Not the end of the threat he poses to the world (because even if his army were destroyed and he himself survived, he could still pose a threat and quietly raise an army)

[goldlock]

No member of the scourge save for the titan sized creations they made are actually all that powerful. Most are quite a bit weaker then your average soldier their strength comes from their near endless numbers and ability to revived over and over again.

[Rubon]

Friendly reminder that this is a videogame, and lore does not always fit game mechanics or server needs on a 1:1 basis lol