Why was Arthas wrong?

[ShamSoEasy]

Of course he was wrong. You're all missing the point that he killed indiscriminately without regard to whether the person he was murdering was actually infected.

I don't think running up to each person and asking them if they consumed the grain would produce very many honest answers. As soon as one person turns and gets killed everyone else will panic and start hiding that fact. Did you consume grain the last few days? No sir I haven't eaten in at least a week, may I leave the city please?

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

Wait to see who's going to turn and who isn't instead of killing everyone. Surely not everyone was infected.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I didn't know the books shed more light on it, that's interesting to learn.

I was thinking more from the videogame perspective.

But yeah I see your point.

The rise of the lichking book covers pretty much every thing about it other then Uther’s perspective. It paints a pretty clear picture of arthas unraveling from the stress of everything leading up to the city which is why he’s so unreasonable when Jaina and Uther just nope out.

[Florena]

At Stratholme he had a difficult choice to make, and he made it. The game even sort of backs this up with all the people you find turning into undead after a short time, rather than say just half of them. They had no time to work with, no cure, no way to quickly and easily tell who was and wasn't infected.

Where Arthas slips is in Northrend.

[Subrias]

by this logic.. when covid started, we should have purged china... haha...

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Wait to see who's going to turn and who isn't instead of killing everyone. Surely not everyone was infected.

If you do that then instead of fighting some peasants with pitchforks you have to fight a bunch of zombies who are capable of going toe to toe with a trained paladin know no fear and never tire.

If it was a small settlement sure but this was a major city and while killing a hundred or so
Peasants who don’t know what they are doing might be possible the same isn’t the case for an organized undead army.

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If Arthas could kill 100% of the population with relative ease I imagine he could have handled easily (with the help of Jaina and Uther) segregating non-infected vs infected and killing those that turn as they turn.

But we'll never know cuz he took the easy way out.

I mean go watch any zombie movie where they try and split family’s and deal with the infected before they turn, it never works out and the Warcraft undead are far more of a threat then normal zombies.

[Darsithis]

by this logic.. when covid started, we should have purged china... haha...

That is not at all the same thing.

Covid doesn’t transform people into an undead army. Arthas was facing a serious threat that had no other solution.

[FelPlague]

Of course he was wrong. You're all missing the point that he killed indiscriminately without regard to whether the person he was murdering was actually infected.

Except there was no possible way they could test them, and still make it in time, the options were
A- kill anyone and everyone, give them a quick death
B- try to do their best to find who is and who is not infected, leading to countless amounts of people suffering, and the lorderan military collapsing under the pressure of having to fight so many undead.

[Adamas102]

Castle walls are designed around keeping people out not keeping people in. Arthas would have needed a siege army to keep the undead in which he doesnt have. He would have to lay siege to a city and to win a siege you have either break the walls (bad idea) or starve the forces inside( you cant starve the undead). also you have cult of the damned inside the city.
You either act fast and stop the spread or you just concede and live with a major city full of undead that spread around the countryside killing your farmers thus hurting your supply lines.

It always seemed like a convenient thing that he had enough men to purge the entire city, prevent people from escaping while he did so, AND confront a dreadlord as well but not enough to make an effort to help the people. And that was AFTER pushing away powerful allies who would have stuck around under different circumstances.

No, I don’t buy it. Yeah, it’s set up to appear like a moral quandary, but we also know that the choice he took set off a chain of events that led to even more atrocities. Save at least a small portion of the city while losing the rest and risking spread is still preferable to committing war crimes against the people you’re sworn to protect.

[FelPlague]

by this logic.. when covid started, we should have purged china... haha...

IDK about you, but covid does not make people transform into fucking undead zombies my dude.

they are on DRASTICALLY different versions.


i fucking garuntee you, if covid made anyone infected transform into a zombie and start infecting other people, we would be shooting people on sight who even so much as sniffled.

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Make what in time?

Make it through the city, to the people who were not infected.

100,000 people, if you stop to qarunteen and take care of the 10,000 the other 90,000 are already infected and spreading to eachother ,suffering, and while you could have killed all 100,000 with no problem, now suddenly you have to fight 90,000 zombies instead of maybe 30,000 and 60,000 civilians.

[Zephire]

Jaina was with arthas on the way to the city and then left to go get help while arthas made the final push to it. The kirin tor blew her off so there was no aid to port in and she just went back by her self.

You mean she already asked for help for Stratholme? I thought what happen in the video below was her first encounter with what the plague realy was and hadn't talked about it with the Kirin Tor. Was some time since I played through the campain in WC3 though so I'm a bit fussy, where and when did she ask Kirin Tor for help against the plauge pre Stratholme?

[FelPlague]

You mean she already asked for help for Stratholme? I thought what happen in the video below was her first encounter with what the plague realy was and hadn't talked about it with the Kirin Tor. Was some time since I played through the campain in WC3 though so I'm a bit fussy, where and when did she ask Kirin Tor for help against the plauge pre Stratholme?

The cure for the plague is only discussed later, and no cure was found until well wrath of the lich king, so there was literally no way they could have found out a cure in time.


and there is mentiion of the plague before stratholme but it was "myth, a magical force of undeath" which is why they leave to investigate, but at that point they dont even know it exists, and are looking for proof, let alone trying to find a cure.

[clevin]

The risk of spread > the cost of innocent life.

Can I shoot people who refuse to mask up in real life? Who go to super spreader events?

This is the problem with gamers - so many of you have no actual morals.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

You mean she already asked for help for Stratholme? I thought what happen in the video below was her first encounter with what the plague realy was and hadn't talked about it with the Kirin Tor. Was some time since I played through the campain in WC3 though so I'm a bit fussy, where and when did she ask Kirin Tor for help against the plauge pre Stratholme?
https://youtu.be/p8UFNaX7ukE

It’s all plays out in the rise of the lichking book. She first meets the undead at some random farm with arthas and some knights. They purge the farm and move on towards the city clearing out any undead they find.

After fighting abunch for I think a few days she splits off to go ask for aid from dal where they tell her no so she heads back to
Meet with arthas where she finds uther first which then leads into that scene.

While she was away from arthas he helped some knights fight the undead who after the battle turned on as they had eaten the grain and he kills KT on the way who tells him about the dread lord.

[clevin]

How could you know? There were no symptoms, people just suddenly became undead. You had to purge the city regardless. A real-life analogy would be everyone wearing masks for covid regardless of whether or not you have it.

No, a real life analogy would be killing people at a superspreader event because you couldn't know if they had it and might spread it.


You people are bad at this.

[FelPlague]

Can I shoot people who refuse to mask up in real life? Who go to super spreader events?

This is the problem with gamers - so many of you have no actual morals.

Literal fucking zombies is not comparable to covid my fucking dude

that is the problem with you, not gamers.

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No, a real life analogy would be killing people at a superspreader event because you couldn't know if they had it and might spread it.


You people are bad at this.

there is no real life analogy because zombies are not fucking real

[Adamas102]

A- kill anyone and everyone, give them a quick death.

Being betrayed and murdered by people you thought you could trust isn’t a great way to go either.

The whole idea of quick, clean executions being imposed on an entire city of frightened civilians by desperate soldiers armed with medieval style weapons is a horrible whitewashing of what that situation would realistically look like.

Even if be believed he had his people’s best intentions in mind, when you view Arthas’ actions as more akin to something like the Rwandan genocide where hundreds of thousands were cut down with machetes it becomes a lot more difficult to stomach.

[Florena]

Literal fucking zombies is not comparable to covid my fucking dude

that is the problem with you, not gamers.

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there is no real life analogy because zombies are not fucking real

Exactly.

People with Covid don't turn into monsters that actively attack people and try to spread it even more. This isn't a problem that could be solved with a quarantine. If all the plague did was kill people then sure, but when they turn into violent undead, that complicates things.

On top of that, Mal'ganis was also there proactively turning people and building an army. Now Arthas did decide to purge the city before Mal'ganis showed up. But he WAS there. There really was not any time for a better solution.

[FelPlague]

Being betrayed and murdered by people you thought you could trust isn’t a great way to go either.

The whole idea of quick, clean executions being imposed on an entire city of frightened civilians by desperate soldiers armed with medieval style weapons is a horrible whitewashing of what that situation would realistically look like.

Even if be believed he had his people’s best intentions in mind, when you view Arthas’ actions as more akin to something like the Rwandan genocide where hundreds of thousands were cut down with machetes it becomes a lot more difficult to stomach.

Which one rather you have

be betrayed and murdered by the people you thought you could trust with a single blow to your head?

Or being forcefulyl betrayed and murdered by the people you loved and trusted while they tear you limb from limb, ripping flesh from bone and gouging at your eyes, biting into your meat and tearing away muslce as your family while still in their own mind, but no longer in control of their bodies, eyes full of tears as they cry, knowing full well what they are doing, but being unable to stop themselves, force you down and tear you limb from limb consuming your corpse and then eachother before eventually losing their minds.




get a fucking hold of yourself if you really think option 2 is "better"
because that is EXACTLY what the plague does in warcraft.
take a read on Kel'thuzad's tour of naxxramas given to him by Anubarak, and then maybe realize the horrors of undeath.

Or if you rather listen.

[Ielenia]

Considering the magic that's available in WoW Arthas was very wrong.

They should instead have quarantined the whole city and study it. People could still be saved.

You do know the cursed grain acts very fast and people were already turning by the time Arthas began the purge, right? And the paladins' ability to cleanse others did not work against the necromantic magic in the grain.

They have teleport magic. Like, supplies and personel could've been there in minutes.

Not really. While teleportation surely cuts down travel time, there is still the whole logistics of finding the resources they need and getting everything together for transport.

This is a typical faulty writing in my oppinion where they use the real world as referens and make the character decide to do X in that setting, disregarding everything that's not present in our world (currently), magic.

Actually, no. In that regard, the story is pretty much believable: there was simply no time to study this and save Stratholme, magic or not.

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He killed civilians based on assumption. He did not check if they were infected. His method did not save anyone, city was destroyed and left for undeads.

Assumptions based on what he found out during his travel toward Stratholme. It wasn't just him pulling that assertion out of his ass. And Arthas wasn't trying to save Stratholme. That city was already lost. He was trying to keep the infection from spreading. Considering the cursed grain acted fast, and the grain that is used to feed an entire city has already been delivered and baked into goods and consumed, there was simply no time to check who was infected and who wasn't, especially since there didn't seem to have any symptoms other than right before turning.