"There must always be a Lich King" - But why?

[Rendark]

There was no real reason for it. They did it so they could bring the lich king back if they needed to.

[Lionhearte0]

Because writers are retarded.
They watched pirate or the caribean and thought that "there must allways be a captain on the flying dutchman" sounded cool, and put that lazy shit in wow to preserve the Lich king as an entity.
It makes absolutely no sense, it's cringe and stupid. So pretty much adequate with Arthas in wotlk globally. That's just wow writing for you.

That's it.

>wow i cant believe these writers didnt come up with good ideas for the next 16320976 expansions 620397 books and 64390762093567 quests in game so retarded i can come up with better lore but i wont

this is you, this is the retarded shit coming out of your brain.

[Synical123]

I always thought this as well... the lich kings goal was to rid Azeroth of all life because it holds people back. If there is no lich king the scourge would run rampant and destroy Azeroth..... sooooo why doesn’t the lich king just stop controlling them and let them run rampant and destroy the world?

[Sagenod]

Some people in this thread seem to think the Lich King is the only being capable of bolstering the Scourge's forces. Necromancers still exist!

[loras]

There is something I've never quite understood from the Lich King's nature and purpose and it's the famous qoute that "there must always be a Lich King", because the Scourge must be controlled or they will ravage the world if unleashed.

But my question is, why? Why must the Scourge be contained/controlled? Why keep such terrible threat to the world remain? It makes no sense to me, if the argument is that the undead will consume the living if left unchecked, why does the new Lich King not destroy them himself? Does the Helm of Domination not have that power? Can't the Lich King just re-absorb the power that sustains every undead or something like that?

I suppose that it no longer matters now, after the shattering of the Helm, but for argument's sake lets discuss!

Partially as a failsafe against the legion, or, presumably, the old gods. Also maybe to put a hold on the jailer's plans by denying him all those damned twisted souls or something.

[Mehrunes]

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.

And how would at least those not break free (never mind that the Forsaken are not higher undead and still broke free after the Lich King had his ice block cracked)? As evidenced by your own example of Scholomance?

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.

On top of that the Scourge in the event isn't just mindlessly rampaging all on its own. It got hijacked by the Mawsworn instead.

Maybe, and maybe not. The overriding imprimatur of the Scourge is a hatred of life and the living, so I would argue sectarian strife among them would actually be minimal until Azeroth was a lifeless sphere - then they'd probably set upon one another with a will and establish a hierarchy, having slaked their majority of their hate. That wouldn't be very helpful to Azeroth as a whole, of course; much less the bulk of the living.

As evidenced by both the Forsaken and the Ebon Blade dedicating themselves to the eradication of the Scourge.

Not really, no. Arthas' ultimate goal was to bring us to him and subvert us, not to kill us, and so we never faced the full brunt of the Scourge - it was a ruse to draw us out, to Icecrown Citadel, where he would ultimately kill us all and raise us as generals of the Scourge. As demonstrated by the current goings-on in the pre-patch, the Scourge has always had massive numbers held in reserve. They've been kept mostly in stasis by Bolvar up until now, and if Bolvar didn't assume the Helm they would've been freed to run rampant across Azeroth.

Except a key part of the ruse was pretending to do things the normal Scourge way. Otherwise there'd be no actual ruse there and Arthas could have just as well planted a banner saying "there's nothing suspicious going on, pay no attention to my unusual behavior tee hee" right next to every Scourge outpost. We fought the Scourge in large battles across Northrend. We bombed the shit out of an endless sea of undead in the Bombardment and Valley of the Fallen Heroes.

Road to Damnation, pg. 3
Icecrown and the Frozen Throne
Journal of Archmage Antonidas
Chronicle Vol. 1

Where does it say on the third page of Road to Damnation that the undead would follow their essential directive to kill the living at all cost? Because I don't even see that essential directive being mentioned there, let alone such specifics of it. The same goes for the Journal of Archmage Antonidas, which outright talks about the undead that Antonidas had a chance to study being controlled. You know, by the Lich King. Which is also what Icecrown and the Frozen Throne is about. There's no mention of undead acting on their own in that book. So it appears to me as if you didn't know what @Verdugo asked a citation for. And given how the paragraph of yours they quoted there had no other point for you to get confused that way, it also appears to me you lost track of what you're talking about.

[Aucald]

And how would at least those not break free (never mind that the Forsaken are not higher undead and still broke free after the Lich King had his ice block cracked)? As evidenced by your own example of Scholomance?

The Forsaken were more or less recruited by Sylvanas, as was depicted when she returned Nathanos to himself despite being a ghoul after being killed by Rammstein. Obviously not all the Scourge were similarly effected, though; as many of them still rampaged across the Plaguelands despite the Lich King's weakened state. A minority might be redeemable, if luck held out.

On top of that the Scourge in the event isn't just mindlessly rampaging all on its own. It got hijacked by the Mawsworn instead.

I was referring to their numbers, not their current state.

As evidenced by both the Forsaken and the Ebon Blade dedicating themselves to the eradication of the Scourge.

A mission at which they've evidently failed, given the aforementioned numbers still extant.

Except a key part of the ruse was pretending to do things the normal Scourge way. Otherwise there'd be no actual ruse there and Arthas could have just as well planted a banner saying "there's nothing suspicious going on, pay no attention to my unusual behavior tee hee" right next to every Scourge outpost. We fought the Scourge in large battles across Northrend. We bombed the shit out of an endless sea of undead in the Bombardment and Valley of the Fallen Heroes.

And yet here they are in the pre-patch, in threatening numbers all the same. Doesn't seem to have mattered what we did.

Where does it say on the third page of Road to Damnation that the undead would follow their essential directive to kill the living at all cost? Because I don't even see that essential directive being mentioned there, let alone such specifics of it. The same goes for the Journal of Archmage Antonidas, which outright talks about the undead that Antonidas had a chance to study being controlled. You know, by the Lich King. Which is also what Icecrown and the Frozen Throne is about. There's no mention of undead acting on their own in that book. So it appears to me as if you didn't know what @Verdugo asked a citation for. And given how the paragraph of yours they quoted there had no other point for you to get confused that way, it also appears to me you lost track of what you're talking about.

Road to Damnation's third page depicts the raising of a new ghoul of the Scourge for the benefit of Kel'thuzad, said ghoul's first act being the butchering of her former spouse. The Journal of Antonidas points that the victims of the Scourge lie dormant, awaiting only the touch of the Lich King's mind, or a greater force such as a Necromancer's will, to stir them into action once more. I think this is probably codified best in the book by Kel'thuzad himself, "The Decree of the Scourge," which states: "To conquer is to corrupt. To corrupt is to take what it is to be righteous and hopeful, to be living, and invert it through any means in your arsenal. The attributes of the living all have synonyms with fatal flaws that are their undoing: hope is dogma, righteousness is zealotry, living is empathy. Recognize what makes that which lives desire to live, and turn it upon itself. [...] The Scourge is the will of the land. All manner of life kneel to our will with an ease that yields a single conclusion: That they need us, they yearn for our salvation. There is no resilience to our practices, no immunity to our commandments. We are every bit the inevitability that natural life holds: Death. Death comes with every life, and undeath comes with every death. The sooner the living recognizes this immutable fact, the easier their transition will be."

This is covered in a variety of other places, as well. It's a well known quantity at this point, so there's really no need to attempt to downplay it. The Scourge are well known for their hatred of life, and it's an imperative given to them on being raised - the Scourge was born as and continues to be the enemy of all life on Azeroth.

[WaltherLeopold]

So why didnt the LK Bolvar just let everyone annihilate the "dormant" scourge?

The whole there must always be a Lich King is just a cop out, it makes no sense with the 10+ years of lore that succeeded it.

[Tarba]

>wow i cant believe these writers didnt come up with good ideas for the next 16320976 expansions 620397 books and 64390762093567 quests in game so retarded i can come up with better lore but i wont

this is you, this is the retarded shit coming out of your brain.

It was easy. Is there an actual reason to keep a Lich king? No? Okay so we kill him.
Their lame excuse to keep him around was so freaking dumb, and made no sense...
It's not because you write a story that you are writing a good one. And I'll clearly never acclame lame retarded writers like that. They didn't write for the sake of the story. They wrote to keep the character around, just in case, and put the lamest excuse possible they could come up with.
Wow story is horseshit. Writers are retarded.

For their main plot they could hire someone not completely retarded. It would be a first in wow.

[Florena]

Taken literally it also just makes no sense. 'We need a lich king for now' maybe sure, but 'always?' There was not always a lich king, there was not always a scourge, the scourge was created not all that long ago and could feasibly still be destroyed over time. It's not like some ancient part of the cosmology where a lich king 'must' exist for some balance or to play some role or something. It's a very new thing.