Why do people like Arthas?

[Kerath]

I find your reasoning pretty silly.
The fallen hero motif is as old as recorded literature (and probably older).
An otherwise good man, succumbing to a fatal flaw in their character and suffering the consequences (consequences which usually affect the innocents around them also) can be seen in works by Homer, Aeschylus and Euripides - which are well over two thousand years old.
People usually find it interesting because it humanises characters - Heroes are not perfect, they can and do make mistakes and others suffer for it.

[Trassk]

I find your reasoning pretty silly.
The fallen hero motif is as old as recorded literature (and probably older).
An otherwise good man, succumbing to a fatal flaw in their character and suffering the consequences (consequences which usually affect the innocents around them also) can be seen in works by Homer, Aeschylus and Euripides - which are well over two thousand years old.
People usually find it interesting because it humanises characters - Heroes are not perfect, they can and do make mistakes and others suffer for it.

Perhaps, but there is a fine line between what flaws humanize a character, and what has them cross that line to being something less then human.

[Kerath]

Perhaps, but there is a fine line between what flaws humanize a character, and what has them cross that line to being something less then human.

I'll respectfully disagree.
Humanity isn't all good, noble and self sacrificing. Cruelty, naked ambition, blind lust, disregard for life are traits which are all too human.

[Resentful]

Warcraft III and TFT is all that needs to be said of how amazing he was and how his char tuned so well.

[DeadmanWalking]

I can sum up Illidans entire character in one line:

"Why doesn't Tyrande love me? /sob"

Its a little more complex than that, its all about his superiority complex. He was born with special colored eyes which denoted him as having a legendary destiny which was rare and as a twin among elves which was rare as well. Malfurion had no talent at magics and Illidan excelled at it so as far as Illidan was concerned it was because Illidan was superior to his brother. He considered Malfurions talent with druidic magics to be a pale comparison to his talent at arcane magics. Arcane magics was superior to druidic magic. He was less motivated by love than that he had decided he wanted her and she was more interested in his brother. This flew in the face of his superiority complex and made him want her even more. His brother became a great hero so he had to be the bigger hero even if it meant sucking the life energy out of a few comrades and dealing with demons.

Illidan wasn't about spurned love. Illidan was about his superiority complex.

As far as why Arthas was liked it was because he had good intentions but ultimately did evil things. Only the most psychotic people think they are evil, the majority of people who others think are evil do evil things for what they consider good reasons. If comic books were real there would not be a single person who would join a group called 'The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants'. Magneto thinks he is protecting mutants from humans by killing/enslaving all humans. His intentions are noble (protect all mutants) but its about how he goes about it that makes him evil (force everyone to be a mutant, kill a nation of humans, ect.). Annakin wants to bring order to the universe and he feels the only way to do so is to subjugate everyone under the grip of fear. There was even a story in Star Wars that the Emperor Palpatine himself saw a powerful race of invaders would be coming so he put things in motion to create a galactic empire war machine.

Arthas was a good child who became a good Paladin but ultimately made the wrong moral choices that lead him down a dark path of self destruction. Upon his death his fathers spirit comes to him and he apologises for his failure and his father tells him that "its okay, all kings eventually fall" which meant that he accepted his sons apology as merely the way that the world works. All Kings eventually fall.

He did have a rather creepy obsession with that horse though..... Sheesh!

---------- Post added 2012-07-19 at 05:47 PM ----------

I find your reasoning pretty silly.
The fallen hero motif is as old as recorded literature (and probably older).
An otherwise good man, succumbing to a fatal flaw in their character and suffering the consequences (consequences which usually affect the innocents around them also) can be seen in works by Homer, Aeschylus and Euripides - which are well over two thousand years old.
People usually find it interesting because it humanises characters - Heroes are not perfect, they can and do make mistakes and others suffer for it.

Beowulf is the earliest form of recorded literature and in it he becomes the fallen hero by choosing to accept the demons offer sleep with her in exchange for becoming a legendary king. Then his son, a dragon, comes to destroy his kingdom and Beowulf and the dragon die in a battle of mutual self-destruction. Before he dies he falls out of favor with the queen and starts to take mistresses which shows that since sleeping with the demon his noble intentions turned to something morally less desirable and he begins his slide downward.

[McNeil]

Kind of getting back to the OP's question - I think complex villains are generally more interesting/compelling/liked(?) than heroic figures. Continuing with Arthas...I find him much more interesting than Thrall. I mean, I know the Horde have a boner for Thrall and all...but all the crap in Cataclysm just proved to me that really...he's just boring. Thrall and Augra/Oprah/Okra (or w/e her name is....I wanted to punch her during the Firelands/Hyjal prequest chain) doesn't even compare to Arthas and Jaina.

I agree with this, I find Arthas easily way more interesting than Thrall. Even in WC3, Thrall was kinda a boring hero, despite being a good leader. But he was just uninteresting. I'd rather see Arthas and Jaina together than Thrall and Aggra, maybe we could've seen it if Metzen wasn't the head of the writing team.

Nonetheless, since Arthas is dead, WoW became more and more uninteresting aswell. In fact the death of Arthas was where the subs began to drop :P

[Kerath]

Beowulf is the earliest form of recorded literature and in it he becomes the fallen hero by choosing to accept the demons offer sleep with her in exchange for becoming a legendary king. Then his son, a dragon, comes to destroy his kingdom and Beowulf and the dragon die in a battle of mutual self-destruction. Before he dies he falls out of favor with the queen and starts to take mistresses which shows that since sleeping with the demon his noble intentions turned to something morally less desirable and he begins his slide downward.

I'm going to assume that you mean the earliest form of literature with an original manuscript that survives today. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey pre-date Beowulf by ~1000 years.

[Jackkernaut]

Because he has really awsome lore behind him. Also Illidan has awsome lore as well.
I just found out the pargonist chars in the game has the most boring lore in the game :| (yeah Lagosh and stuff but we never actually experienced that. WTB Chromi timetravel package to all those cool event described in the books)

[Shuyin]

Actually, forget everything. All you really need in order to understand is... just this.

he killed the Lich King alone and dropped only a helm? i can see why he would want revenge..

[McNeil]

he killed the Lich King alone and dropped only a helm? i can see why he would want revenge..

The Lich King (Ner'Zhul) also had some other armor, Arthas probably took them aswell:



I'm curious if they are crafted by the Nathrezim aswell, and may have helped corrupting Arthas even more

[Adam Jensen]

The Lich King (Ner'Zhul) also had some other armor, Arthas probably took them aswell:



I'm curious if they are crafted by the Nathrezim aswell, and may have helped corrupting Arthas even more

http://www.wowwiki.com/Plate_of_the_Damned

[Deleted]

he have so sexy blue eyes

[Chonar]

he killed the Lich King alone and dropped only a helm? i can see why he would want revenge..

Ha! *applauds*
"The stats on this thing are awful. But hey, flavor text!"

[Kashii]

Beowulf is the earliest form of recorded literature and in it he becomes the fallen hero by choosing to accept the demons offer sleep with her in exchange for becoming a legendary king. Then his son, a dragon, comes to destroy his kingdom and Beowulf and the dragon die in a battle of mutual self-destruction. Before he dies he falls out of favor with the queen and starts to take mistresses which shows that since sleeping with the demon his noble intentions turned to something morally less desirable and he begins his slide downward.

Hmmm...good example. I was trying to wrap my head around whether Arthas = Beowulf = Fallen Hero or was it antihero and I guess I decided that fallen hero and antihero are pretty much the same thing (I feel like there is a distinction but I can't put my finger on it).

Maybe it's just a matter of degrees. I think Beowulf is defined by his heroic deeds rather than his failures where the reverse is true of Arthas. We really only come to realize the human element of Arthas at the end of his life. We wanted to kill him because he has done evil things - but there is a sadness when he finally dies at our hands.

That seems different from Beowulf whose flaws only seem to be there to remind us that even heroes are human.

[McNeil]

Arthas has his own book and is in half the campaigns of wc3, I suggest reading/playing them to know who Arthas is.

If you only know Arthas from WoW, then yes ofcourse you wonder why people like him...

[Trassk]

Arthas has his own book and is in half the campaigns of wc3, I suggest reading/playing them to know who Arthas is.

If you only know Arthas from WoW, then yes ofcourse you wonder why people like him...

always the same deal with Thrall and Malfurion to... infact any lore character. I read Of Blood and Honor, and remember how awesome Tirion was as a character. Come wow and what he does ingame in wrath, and the gamers are pissing all over him. I read lord of the clans and the shattering and twilight of the aspects, and the depth to Thralls character made me admire him greatly, but come ingame, the playerbase wanted to rip on him for any action he did. Same with Malfurion, except the difference there is malfurion hasn't appeared in the game until cata, so gets away with it a little more.. though he still gets ripped on.

The point is, in the books, the characters in warcraft fan out and really becomes great characters. Ingame, the people that don't bother to read the books and expect all the lore to be handed to them ingame, they don't honestly give a crap about character development, they just want to feel like the hero, and probably just want a lore character around to satify there eeping 'Woooh, I did better then <insert hero> at killing that boss, I'm dah man!!"

[Grof]

bcs ppls failed in rl like arthas failed in wow...like myself...