To be honest, Anduin is the cancer of story.

[Soon-TM]

He doesn't seem overly pure, what with the mind controlling, manipulating and abetting of gruesome tactics (Alleria and Turalyon's torture, Genn being Genn, the dark irons slaughtering goblins by the hundreds, void magic in general).

Considering that everything you mentioned is unlikely to have any consequences whatsoever, as is generally the case every time the Alliance does something... less than heroic, we can safely write them out of the equation.

Nor does he seem unreasonably liked either, Velen has the priest-priest mentor thing going on and the dwarves/Genn had a bond with his father. Tyrande never respected him much and Malfurion just follows her, Jaina does her own thing as always and Mekkatorque exists, if barely.

Not only the entire Alliance leadership, with the sole exception of Tyrande and maybe Malfie, is fawning over Anduin, but also all of the Horde leadership as well. The only two characters (Rokhan and Talanji) who reject Anduin's ideals of white peace are written as unreasonable, stupid warmongers.

On the horde side Sylvanas' hate is a bit odd

It isn't as odd when you consider that Sylvanas was pretty much the only OG character remaining (aside from Bob and Thrall, who are currently non entities and are likely to remain so) in the Horde, only to be turned into a crappy remake of Garrosh.

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I can't believe people are saying Anduin is the most well-written character in the game. Like....what? You legitimately think this? Because he's a predictable Gary Stu who can never do anything wrong. The fact that Golden, who writes for Anduin, is in charge of him means he will always be a boring as fuck Gary Stu.

Some people mistake predictability and good writing. Yes, Andy is consistent and predictable, but that doesn't make him any better. After all, all (non evil) Mary Sue's (or Gary Stu's, if you prefer) are consistent and predictable, since the world is written around them, not the other way around.

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PS: It also doesn't make sense that he teaches VAROCK the meaning of Honor.

Yeah, Saurfang discussing deep historical issues of the Horde with the leader of the enemy faction, out of all people, was one of the most facepalm-worthy moments in the entire story.

[TheRevenantHero]

Considering that everything you mentioned is unlikely to have any consequences whatsoever, as is generally the case every time the Alliance does something... less than heroic, we can safely write them out of the equation.



Not only the entire Alliance leadership, with the sole exception of Tyrande and maybe Malfie, is fawning over Anduin, but also all of the Horde leadership as well. The only two characters (Rokhan and Talanji) who reject Anduin's ideals of white peace are written as unreasonable, stupid warmongers.



It isn't as odd when you consider that Sylvanas was pretty much the only OG character remaining (aside from Bob and Thrall, who are currently non entities and are likely to remain so) in the Horde, only to be turned into a crappy remake of Garrosh.

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Some people mistake predictability and good writing. Yes, Andy is consistent and predictable, but that doesn't make him any better. After all, all (non evil) Mary Sue's (or Gary Stu's, if you prefer) are consistent and predictable, since the world is written around them, not the other way around.

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Yeah, Saurfang discussing deep historical issues of the Horde with the leader of the enemy faction, out of all people, was one of the most facepalm-worthy moments in the entire story.

My whole point is that people are legitimately saying he's well-written. He isn't. He is incredibly boring and the fact that he actively cannot do anything morally wrong without experiencing pain is pure cringe. He has only gotten worse since Golden got her hands on writing him.

[MikeBogina]

since the Shadowland pre-patch, all 3 alliance leader show feat of strength while the horde leader just got beat over and over…We go in the maw,we found Jaina all good fighting them while Baine and Thrall are just powerless.Finally the Jailer attack them and once again the horde leader got beat while Anduin got a ‘‘heroic’’ moment.

Welcome to World of Warcraft: Alliance and Friends.

Blizzard has a clear bias towards alliance and any alliance player who denies this is just stupid. I cringe everytime i go through the intro of Shadowlands as a horde player.
tHrAlLwHaTsTrOuBlInGyOu????

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I wish Varian was here...
I don't think Sylvanas would be so brave to start BFA if Varian was alive

He also wouldn't have put up with Genn's shit that started the war either...

[Tharivor]

The problem with Anduin is that while we are told he has "flaws", these are never truly shown and anything that he's involved in inevitably ends working out according to his will and with no real consequences.

BfA is a perfect example of this: we're told that he feels he's "failed" his people because his pacifism was unable to stop the war, and both Sylvanas and Tyrande call him out for this. Nevertheless the narrative proves him exactly right in the end: Peace really was/is the only way forward, once purged of Sylvanas the Horde really has become positive force, and Tyrande's warmongering really did do more harm than good by endangering this peace. When this becomes a trend (and I would challenge anyone to find an example where Anduin's views haven't been vindicated wholesale) it becomes difficult for players to really believe his flaws are real, since they seem nothing more than temporary wobbles that never really impact the fundamental correctness of any of his views and actions.

This is what makes him often feel like a Mary Sue even if he doesn't meet the technical definition of the term. He is not simply a principled character holding onto his views in a complicated world. He's a character where the world proves every one of his views/actions to be absolutely correct in every instance.

Compare this to Velen for example, who despite being just as much of a virtuous and good person as Anduin, is nevertheless written as making real mistakes and having real flaws, even if he is still able to overcome them. In Cata we see his tendency towards blind faith over action rebuked by Anduin, in WoD we see an alternative universe where this flaw causes disaster to the Draenei and so get a real sense of its danger, and then finally in Legion he is forced to confront and overcome it in order to take the Draenei to Argus. Yes, his principles are still intact and yes he still triumphs in the end. But the road is winding with enough potholes that he is forced to grow as a character in order to reach his end-goal.

Anduin never really has any of this: there are times where he feels like he's made a mistake and times when other people claim he's done so, but the world always shifts itself to resolve the problem without him having to confront or overcome anything. His critics are always wrong, even ironically when he criticises himself. All he has to do is keep faith and stick to his initial opinions and the world proves him right and solves his problems for him.

[geco]

Welcome to World of Warcraft: Alliance and Friends.

Blizzard has a clear bias towards alliance and any alliance player who denies this is just stupid. I cringe everytime i go through the intro of Shadowlands as a horde player.

It is a bias towards Humans.

[Tharivor]

He isn't a Mary Sue because he's not all powerful, he's not all knowing, he regularly fails, makes mistakes, and falls short of people's expectations. He's not even completely morally perfect with what we saw him endorse in Shadows Rising and the dangerous gamble he played freeing Saurfang behind the night elves' backs that ultimately ended the Fourth War.

Can you name an instance where an of these "mistakes" haven't ultimately been proven right in the end?

It only initially seems like he's failed in BfA, when the War of Thorns happens despite his attempts to build bridges with Sylvanas. But like you said his gambit of trusting Saurfang is actually what wins the war. For all her criticism of his passivity, its not Tyrande's thirst for vengeance that allows the Alliance to reach the walls of Orgimmar: rather its Anduins sympathy and friendliness towards the Horde that wins the conflict. In the end his approach was right all along and prevails when all the alternatives cannot.

[korijenkins]

Anduin, and perhaps Velen, are the only ones who look beyond faction wars.

You can try and call him a Mary Sue, but he's probably the most developed character in the narrative atm, at least in WoW's lifespan. The way he behaves makes sense given his journey in MoP. He studied with the Pandaren, learned their beliefs, and adopted some of them, and was proven right when Garrosh went mad.

You act like he SHOULD be incompetent. He was essentially raised by Varian, Bolvar, Genn, and Velen, 4 incredibly notable, important, and competent characters. Why wouldn't he be competent exactly? Because he's young? Is that the only reason?

[Vakna]

ITT I learned that characters cannot be friends or allies without being subservient. Thank you for that revelation.

(Just in case your IQ is low enough that you don't get sarcasm, which judging by this thread it is, it was in fact sarcasm)

[leggomydairy]

I thought this post was mocking the OP until I realized that you are the OP.

Do you realize your arguments sound like satire? With a name like TrueHorde I suppose you do.

omg I thought it was a mock too.
Anduin isn’t a bad character he’s just too soft and it gets annoying because he’s like the Jaina of old (peace peace peace) but a priest

[Lorgar Aurelian]

anything that he's involved in inevitably ends working out according to his will and with no real consequences.

BfA is a perfect example of this

I mean just going off BFA we have him, screwing up a meeting between forsaken and humans giving sylvanas more leverage to push The horde to war.

Being tricked into thinking the horde were going for silithus leading to Teldrassil being burned and likely most of the night elfs as a race dying.

Failing to take undercity leading to masssive troop deaths.

Attacking zandalar pushing them zandalari to the horde.

Failing to help retake dark shore leaving the alliance army split.

Really it seems like there was a ton of flaws and consequences but people just ignore all of them because the war ended.

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Can you name an instance where an of these "mistakes" haven't ultimately been proven right in the end?

It only initially seems like he's failed in BfA, when the War of Thorns happens despite his attempts to build bridges with Sylvanas. But like you said his gambit of trusting Saurfang is actually what wins the war. For all her criticism of his passivity, its not Tyrande's thirst for vengeance that allows the Alliance to reach the walls of Orgimmar: rather its Anduins sympathy and friendliness towards the Horde that wins the conflict. In the end his approach was right all along and prevails when all the alternatives cannot.

The meeting I Arthi, the war of thorns, the siege of lorderon, the siege of zandalar, not one of these are proven right in the end all of them are massive failures the fact that some where down then line the war eventually ends doesn’t mean any of them were proven right.

[Nikeyla]

This boy king and the other human kings like him play at leadership, when they have so few years of experience! It is in Tyrande we must place our faith, by the Light of Elune, we are guided!

For Teldrassil.

Dunno, but if you ask me, she is going to be the next one going insane turning into a boss, because thats the only way to kill off old unwanted characters, obviously.

[MCMLXXXII]

Anduin is the Kirk Cameron of WoW

[Tharivor]

screwing up a meeting between forsaken and humans giving sylvanas more leverage to push The horde to war.

He doesn't though. Its revealed Sylvanas was always going to start the war anyway because she was evil and working for the Jailer the whole time, so the meeting was never going to end well- she would never allow the Forsaken to grow close to their human relatives even in Calia never showed up. And in the fact the very fact he called the meeting and got Calia killed proves to be a good thing since now she's able to "sympathise" with the Forsaken and step in as their next racial leader.

Being tricked into thinking the horde were going for silithus leading to Teldrassil being burned and likely most of the night elfs as a race dying.

Is this really put on Anduin? The whole of the Alliance leadership is tricked and no one blames him for it. He seems to blame himself for some reason, but its not like he could have done anything to prevent it.

Failing to take undercity leading to masssive troop deaths.

Again not really a "failure" that has anything to do with him personally or his personality. If anything attacking the Undercity was out of character for him and results in him defaulting back to his initial instinct of making peace- which of course is proved right.

Attacking zandalar pushing them zandalari to the horde.

Is he even depicted as involved in that? I admit I haven't done it from the Alliance side, but on the Horde side all the hate and blame is fixed on Jaina, not Anduin.

Failing to help retake dark shore leaving the alliance army split.

This isn't a mistake- its an instance where he is proven right. Tyrande's offensive failed to make an impact and only Anduin's kindness to Saurfang saved the Alliance war effort. Tyrande is the one depicted as splitting the troops, while Anduin was trying to keep them together.

Really it seems like there was a ton of flaws and consequences but people just ignore all of them because the war ended.

People don't ignore them, the narrative does. Leaving out the examples where you seem to conflate the Alliance failing with Anduin personally failing, all of the above are minimised and resolved by the narrative in Anduin's favour. Tyrande's quest for vengeance and taking on the Night Warrior has proved a mistake and threatens to consume her. The collapse of the meeting at Thoradan's Wall has been placed entirely at evil Sylvanas' feet and Calia has risen to become a shining light ready to redeem the Forsaken. At no point were Anduin's initial instincts for building peace through dialogue wrong. Though many on the Alliance like Genn and Tyrande doubted him, he proved his peaceful ways are always right in the end.

[Tharivor]

The meeting I Arthi, the war of thorns, the siege of lorderon, the siege of zandalar, not one of these are proven right in the end all of them are massive failures the fact that some where down then line the war eventually ends doesn’t mean any of them were proven right.

But the war eventually ends because of Anduin's actions not in spite of them. Thoradin's Wall directly leads to Calia becoming de-facto leader of the Forsaken. His refusal to support Tyrande is proved right by the fact that Tyrande has ended up consumed by her vengeance. And despite people criticising him for being too soft on the Horde, the Alliance was only able to win because he was soft on Saurfang.

And again, I don't think the game places Zandalar or the War of Thorns at his feet at all- hes not personally involved in either of them. But where he is personally involved and advocating his trademarked pacifism, his views are always proven right in the end and his more aggressive opponents are the ones depicted as wrong.

[Dazmalak]

I mean just going off BFA we have him, screwing up a meeting between forsaken and humans giving sylvanas more leverage to push The horde to war.

Being tricked into thinking the horde were going for silithus leading to Teldrassil being burned and likely most of the night elfs as a race dying.

Failing to take undercity leading to masssive troop deaths.

Attacking zandalar pushing them zandalari to the horde.

Failing to help retake dark shore leaving the alliance army split.

Really it seems like there was a ton of flaws and consequences but people just ignore all of them because the war ended.

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The meeting I Arthi, the war of thorns, the siege of lorderon, the siege of zandalar, not one of these are proven right in the end all of them are massive failures the fact that some where down then line the war eventually ends doesn’t mean any of them were proven right.

Pull off your blinders, please.

The meeting in Arathi DID work out for Anduin in the end because it led to the Forsaken questioning Sylvanas' leadership to start with on top of creating the abomination that is Calia, a character that should not even exist as she currently does (light undead? wtf...). Now the Forsaken have what is essentially an Alliance character thrust into a role of leadership (as much as she claims to be otherwise, why the hell is she in Oribos representing the Horde) who spouts off all the same idealistic drivel that Anduin does. Is any of this intentional by Anduin? No. But it doesn't change the fact that in the long run it's a net win for Anduin, even if it was a royal fuck up to begin with.

The siege of Lordaeron resulted with Sarufang and Baine turning traitor to the Horde, a destroyed Horde/Forsaken capital, and the return of Jaina Proudmoore. Again, none of this is intended by Anduin, because despite his failure, it all worked out in his favor for no other reason than that he is the good guy.

The War of Thorns is blamed entirely on Sylvanas and Anduin gets a pass for whatever tactical blunders he made by falling for a trap. Again, he bears no responsibility other than his own personal "I feel bad" monologues.

Zandalar was aiding the Horde and were a rightful target to strike at, nevermind always being an antagonistic faction in the game anyway. If you think somehow that these trolls weren't going to join the Horde anyway, you're insane. Then again, Zandalar lost its king, the Alliance suffered no notable casualties.

Darkshore and Arathi war fronts are both Alliance victories in canon, so I'm not even sure why you brought this point up.

But you brought up a good point: All the flaws and consequences are ignored because the war ended. The Alliance won. The Horde has now become Alliance 2.0. Based on my observation of in-game lore of Shadowlands, every controversial race and character has been dumbed down to boring human levels. The only current exception is Tyrande, who is probably next on the chopping block for going power mad and daring to go against the grain of unity that the game is currently trying to preach. If that isn't a total win in Anduin's favor, then I don't know what is.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Then instead of pointing out age, maybe point to what I asked for, which is how he progressed.

that would be the rest of the post.

As age itself is not a sign of progression, it doesn't matter what they "tend to do."

Your right age isn’t a sign of progress which is why I’m not the one who originally brought up age that was you trying to write off his progress as just aging.

Nobody said it was. Uther developed as a character despite never switching alignments. Arthas changed alignments multiple times, and developed as a character. Alignment has nothing to do with development, but development SHOULD dictate your alignment, as if your alignment is never in question, are you actually developing or learning anything at all?

You should really take in some actual literature instead of sticking to nonsense DND, a character alignment doesn’t ever have to be in question for them to be developing or learn a character can stay in there little silly DND box and still have a ton of development.

It really isn't. Nothing in his priest training taught him to disobey orders. His princely training was ALL about following his father's orders.

your absolutely right nothing in his princely/priestly training taught him to disobey orders it’s the people who were training him that he picked up his ideals and morals from which when mashed all together lead him to disobeying orders.

If he HAD developed any qualities during this, we'd expect to see Anduin disobeying his superiors and repeatedly disappearing from his throne with no one knowing where or what he plans to do, as he did when he disappeared from Varian's sight - Because that shows a character flaw and/or quality that exists due to the events that transpired - You know, development.

this literally happens multiple times it’s been a thing since mop with him doing it in legion and in shadows rising.

It quite literally doesn't. Valeera is a Horde member who trained with Varian in the fighting rings, and did not join the Alliance at any point. Training with his father's close allies does not make him a member of the Alliance.

Valeera is a literally alliance spy who works directly for the for Wrynn family she’s not an actual member of the horde.

His dad, being a single father and needing to take his son with him when he went to diplomatic meetings

This is some next level stupid shit. Varian didn’t need to take anduin any where because he was single father did you see anduin at the meeting in Dal before ulduar or at the argent tournament? Anduin only went to meetings to be part of alliance diplomacy because he would one day be a leader in the alliance. I mean come on.

Which has been shown to not be true, as they move large fighting forces with portals whenever it is convenient for them. See: Warlords of Draenor.

New lore beats out old lore on what’s canon wow has always worked that way.

... which includes whomever Sylvanas has stationed in Orgrimmar, including Undead. Why is this hard to understand? Sylvanas led the attack, of course her Forsaken were involved - Just because the troops came from Org, doesn't mean there were no undead.

yes the forces of org include undead they also include goblins cows trolls and every other horde race. The fact that there are non orcs at org doesn’t make it a 2v1 the main fighting forces of each race didn’t more to join the attack on the tree even if some members of each was were part of the force stationed at org.

I really can’t tell if your trying to sprinkle in massive lore failures to troll or your being genuine but either way All the stuff I cut out isn’t worth responding to if you don’t even have the basics like Valeera being a spy down.

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Pull off your blinders, please.

The meeting in Arathi DID work out for Anduin in the end because it led to the Forsaken questioning Sylvanas'

the Forsaken are never at all shown to question Sylvanas for what happens at Arathi Sylvanas had full control of the narrative there.

The siege of Lordaeron resulted with Sarufang and Baine turning traitor to the Horde, a destroyed Horde/Forsaken capital, and the return of Jaina Proudmoore.

Baine doesn’t turn traitor until sylvanas starts acting against the horde by mind controlling undead and it has nothing to do with Jaina’s return she would have come back with or without anduin Blundering the siege. The only Gain was saurfang.

The War of Thorns is blamed entirely on Sylvanas and Anduin gets a pass for whatever tactical blunders he made by falling for a trap. Again, he bears no responsibility other than his own personal "I feel bad" monologues.

Sylvanas taking the blame doesn’t make it any less a failure nor does it being the night elfs who died because of that failure back.

Zandalar was aiding the Horde and were a rightful target to strike at,

Irrelevant the goal of the siege was to stop them from joining the horde no matter how rightful of a target they were they failed at there goal.

nevermind always being an antagonistic faction in the game anyway.

Also a nit pick but they weren’t also antagonistic they were worked with in both classic and wrath to deal with other troll tribes.

If you think somehow that these trolls weren't going to join the Horde anyway, you're insane. Then again, Zandalar lost its king, the Alliance suffered no notable casualties.

The whole point of the siege was to take the king hostage to they could use him to stop the Zandalari from joining the horde him being killed is that plan failing and then not losing any one of note is irrelevant.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

He doesn't though. Its revealed Sylvanas was always going to start the war anyway because she was evil and working for the Jailer the whole time, so the meeting was never going to end well- she would never allow the Forsaken to grow close to their human relatives even in Calia never showed up. And in the fact the very fact he called the meeting and got Calia killed proves to be a good thing since now she's able to "sympathise" with the Forsaken and step in as their next racial leader.

she was going to start the war any way but handing her more reasons to legitimize it to the other horde members is still a massive failure as if she didn’t have those legitimate reasons people like saurfang would have opposed her he pretty much handed her the path of least resistance.

Is this really put on Anduin? The whole of the Alliance leadership is tricked and no one blames him for it. He seems to blame himself for some reason, but its not like he could have done anything to prevent it.

He’s the high kind of the alliance and ultimate leader of wartime movements the blame full upon him even if the other leaders were tricked as well the buck stops at him as they say.

As for blame it really isn’t needed for something to be a failure Jiana isn’t blamed for getting theramore blown up but it’s still ultimately her failure of trying to be neutral while also staging alliance troops which lead to it.

Again not really a "failure" that has anything to do with him personally or his personality. If anything attacking the Undercity was out of character for him and results in him defaulting back to his initial instinct of making peace- which of course is proved right.

He personally lead the assault on undercity and it was his tactical blinded who got a ton of his troops killed he tried to be the strong war time leader his father was and failed at it Wondrously.

Is he even depicted as involved in that? I admit I haven't done it from the Alliance side, but on the Horde side all the hate and blame is fixed on Jaina, not Anduin.

it’s his plans and he sends the forces to do it against the wishes of tyranda who wants aid in dark shore, just like his plans at lorderon they kinda suck and end in failure.

This isn't a mistake- its an instance where he is proven right. Tyrande's offensive failed to make an impact and only Anduin's kindness to Saurfang saved the Alliance war effort. Tyrande is the one depicted as splitting the troops, while Anduin was trying to keep them together.

saurfang has nothing to do with the attack on Zandalari he was already in the wind not supporting Tyrande not only hurts night elf human relation it also Help pushes the Zandalari right into the horde which is what they were trying to stop.

People don't ignore them, the narrative does.

A bit of both, like any story the narrative moves past failure to continue to the good guys winning but that doesn’t make those failures any less part of the narrative even if people want to ignore them.

It’s like for example saying Harry Potter never failed at any thing because even though he got people hurt and killed Voldemort died in the end.

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but you seem to have this insistent idea that Anduin is the best written character and I can't in any way agree with that statement without a LOT of context that you are unable to provide thus far.

You are absolutely right there is a lot of context that I am unable to provide.

I had taken it for granted that if you wanted to talk about the writing of a character you would have actually gone though the material that surrounds said character, I thought to highly of you and thus have wasted both of our time. I apologize.

[cparle87]

There must always be (thunder clap) A FACTION CONFLICT!

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My space goat occasionally also squid friends are my space goat occasionally also squid friends, HOWEVER, they are still new to the Alliance, certainly compared with the likes of the humans, dwarves, gnomes, and Night elves.

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1,000, yawn.

We've been at it with the Legion and other threats for 10,000 years! How dare you insult us!

First three I'll give you, since they've been friends since Second War. Night elves? WC3 was almost 20 years ago in lore now.

[Varodoc]

There must always be (thunder clap) A FACTION CONFLICT!

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My space goat occasionally also squid friends are my space goat occasionally also squid friends, HOWEVER, they are still new to the Alliance, certainly compared with the likes of the humans, dwarves, gnomes, and Night elves.

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1,000, yawn.

We've been at it with the Legion and other threats for 10,000 years! How dare you insult us!

No, Tyrande spent 10.000 years skulking in filthy trees like troll garbage.

Alleria and Turalyon spent 1.000 years fighting the Legion at every moment (Alleria fought the Void too).

It is therefore not a surprise that now they are ruling the Alliance in Anduin's absence.

[MikeBogina]

It is a bias towards Humans.

Yup, when I say Alliance, i mean human

Darion, Jaina, Anduin, Bolvar, Taelia, Calia... so glad to see the humans heavily represented in Shadowlands.