Honestly it always felt shoehorned to me. Like they wanted to kill off Arthas but wanted to keep the Scourge around for future use so shoved the idea in to keep the Scourge as an entity.
It never made sense to me that a scourge WITHOUT a leader would be more dangerous than one WITH one. Let's say that the scourge go on a rampage, okay sure why not. But would they not also turn on eachother? They should be mindless, aimless, and likely ultimately self destructive not somehow coordinated enough to seek out and wipe out life across the world.
Hell if anything you'd expect the death of the LK to lead to more Forsaken type undead breaking free from the lich king's grasp.
And even if the leaderless Scourge was such a big threat, why couldn't LK Bolvar say, round up scourge like cattle to have the scourge systematically destroyed bit by bit?
It never really felt right to me.
Yes, but that was at a time when the undead plague was new and it started in grains at local human villages. They werent able to defend themselves. Our forces were armed to teeth and its very hard to justify this whole: or else we woulsnt able to handle it kind of situation.
Like I said the scourge that would go rampart would not excist with a general type of creature to get some structure in their offensives, without that it mind sound scary , but the scourged would just be scattered all over the place and it would be even easier for us to kill them.
Dont forget we had argent dawn, ebonblade etc all ready.
To me it was realy a gameplay/lore issue that we should just swallow because the story demands it.
I dont think wrathgate matters here realy.. we were already attacking icecrown at that point as horde and alliance. Even without the scourge going rampart they would start a fight anyway, but never happened. I would say not relevant.
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Yup, same for me. The leader makes sure the minions are attacking the right target and make sure there is some cordination. I mean.. who doesnt say that they will attack eachother and wipe themselves out?
It was a pretty empty threat.. and I more and more like the idea of Terenas being controlled to say that, just so save the army of undead for future uses.
Last edited by Alanar; 2020-11-10 at 03:40 PM.
When you make a counterclaim, you should ideally back it up with something that rebuts or contradicts the original claim. Which part of this claim is false? The Plague and/or Necromancy creating new Scourge a la the Third War? The fact that the Horde and Alliance were just coming out of a war with Arthas and the Scourge in Northrend? The fact that the Wrathgate incident had reignited the faction conflict? The fact that lower-tier undead like zombies and ghouls swarmed and overwhelmed Lordaeron? Make an actual argument of some kind.
"We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see." ― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
The Jailer. When you think about it, Illidan trying to destroy the Lich King is no different than what Sylvanas did in the Shadowlands cinematic (she was sent by the Jailer). The Jailer would have only benefit if Illidan won vs. Arthas and Ner'zhul and destroyed the Helm of Domination.
The game doesn't properly illustrate the sheer insanity of the Scourge population. Nearly every being that has ever died and ever will die can be risen to become Scourge. We're talking about an army that dwarfs all others in comparison. They have to be controlled because you simply can't kill them all. Every time they kill someone in your army, that person rises up as part of the Scourge themselves. Without a Lich King to keep them from running rampant, they would kill and turn every living being they come across and add even more to their armies until they become unstoppable waves of death upon the living.
That's why I said I don't think the Scourge would ultimately be victorious - the forces of Azeroth know more about them and how they operate, and they'd be more prepared for tactics like those in the Third War. But regardless, you're still talking about major loss of life and a war of attrition against a foe against whom losses of soldiers generally increase their standing power. It's not insurmountable but it's still a huge undertaking, not even taking into account the renewed faction hostilities or prior losses against the Scourge in Northrend.
It's also worth noting that the Scourge aren't just in Northrend, they're *everywhere* on Azeroth at that point - they've got enclaves in the Eastern Kingdom (Scholomance, Stratholme, the Plaguelands) and in Kalimdor (Razorfen Downs). They're going to rampage all over, unchecked and unguided by the Lich King, absorbing civilians they encounter into their ranks as they run roughshod across currently unprotected settlements while the bulk of the Alliance and Horde are across the sea in Northrend.
As for the Wrathgate, it basically breaks down the cohesion between the factions, which was a large part of what initially got them to Icecrown in the first place according to Chronicle Vol. 3. It took Tirion forming the Ashen Verdict to assemble enough of a coalition fighting force to take the fight to Icecrown Citadel following the Wrathgate incident - and that nearly ended in failure itself. I'd argue that the Wrathgate had a pretty pronounced effect on the war in Northrend as a whole, and as a result would've had huge ramifications on any possible continued war with the Scourge in this hypothetical situation.
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Yes, but it was the masses of converted zombies and ghouls that routed the defenders of Lordaeron before they had any real chance to quell the threat. The Scourge ended Lordaeron with their numbers - numbers culled from victims of the Plague of Undeath, a Plague that the Scourge still has a weapon and could still utilize against Azeroth's defenders. Not to mention the fact that the Scourge also have remaining Necromancers and other leader figures who aren't mindless, such as the Scourge remnant active in the Eastern Kingdoms in Cata.
"We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see." ― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
The scourge without a master wouldn't be dangerous at all, they would be contained to Northrend, after all they have no reason to leave that continent. Stumbling over themselves, while they could be easily killed from the air. Just put a few hundred magi on Airships and wipe them out one firestorm at a time.
https://wow.gamepedia.com/File:Troll_Wars_magi.jpg
Or just drop mana, light and normal bombs
I understand that, but if no one took that crown up, but Tirion did get Terenas message it wouldn't be unthinkable if Tirion just told us directly what happened we would have enough time to counter attack that I believe. How will mindless scourge work for that matter? they just randomly ress? we dealt with most of the scourge or undead for that matter already.
Just to be make sure, undead get risen if no one will pick up the crown?
Afther the fall of the lich king IF the scourge would go rampage and we would know directly it would still count as a world threat how it's treated with blue and red teamed up and use all forces needed. For the greater good, sure the tention is there like always, but blizzard isn't shy for teaming up when it's needed.
The tention will always be there, that's part of warcraft .
I always suspected that they took that decision because they didn't want to update the world to reflect the demise of the LK. WoW was still young at the time, that was the first expansion taking place on Azeroth, and they were unsure how many expansions they had going forward. That "trick" avoided them to redo Northrend zones in the upcoming Cataclysm expansion, where they updated most story wise outdated Vanilla zones to the "present". After that, they probably decided that updating every zone to reflect the advancement of the story was a not really an issue, and just updated the most relevant ones.
The "mindless" portion of the Scourge would be the immense rank and file of ghouls and lesser undead - there's nothing mindless about the greater Scourge such as Necromancers, Liches, and Death Knights. They're controlled by the Lich King but they're far from mindless and they're fully capable of making their own plans and so forth. This is borne out in Cata itself, when you have the Scholomance Scourge doing their own thing despite Bolvar acting as Jailer of the Damned.
"We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see." ― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
"There must always be a Lich King" because Metzen loved nothing more than putting characters in the freezer (no joke intended) to pull out later, and that proud tradition is about all the new writing team has in common with him. Far less effort than developing new ones.
Why no, people don't just like Sylvie for T&A: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...ery-Cinematic/
Because it is a plothole without much logic behind it. Scourge was leaderless, we killed basically everyone of some importance. Some necromancers hiding means little. There is no infinite supply of corpses, Scourge is not endless. Every dead body/ghoul/skeleton burned means one less potential undead rising. They could have been systematically bombed into dust by Alliance and Horde.
I suppose you could say that it would be costly to keep dedicated eradication mission in Northrend and so we just trusted Bolvar. Maybe.
IMHO it still is bullshit.
It didn't make sense back then and it makes even less sense now that it has been proven false (we beat the Scourge in the pre-patch event even though Alliance and Horde are pretty much repleted in terms of military force). I guess Terenas was just a confused old man at that point.
They would also descend upon each other battling for dominance, ultimately lacking the actual power to command the whole of the scourge without the helm. They would be a bunch of splinter groups that on their own are easily dealt with. Without the lich king there is no cohesion and without cohesion the scourge is not a world ending threat, just a regional one.
Needing a lich king was idiotic back then and it is still today.
The spirit of Uther said that first. A character can only be as intelligent as the author. Unfortunately, the authors are dumb.
The declared idea of the Arthas, the Lich King, is to conquer the world and kill the living. If letting loose the scourge would serve that purpose, why would they need a Lich King? Besides, shouldn't the absence of a Lich King restore the undead's free will and thinking? Isn't that, how the Forsaken came to being?
*looks at covid*
Yea, no way the scourge could cause a new undead pandemic