Yeah, she’d easily counter Bolvar. He’s too slow to do anything.
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Well I’m sorry, but wasn’t Arthas a mere mortal paladin too? He climbed the ladder to those powers much like Malfurion, though both of them were chosen by incredibly powerful beings.
When do powers become an issue, exactly and why? I think his story had a lot of gravitas and emotion even when he got the ability to grind the High Elves and their kingdom to dust, along with Dalaran and all their mages. Soloing the likes of Anasterian, Kael’thas, Illidan Stormrage and Antonidas.
Arthas raising Sindragosa is easily one of the most epic scenes in WoW.
But would “just a scholar” be able to prophetise the end of the world, return from the dead, let alone open the Dark Portal? The story needed these powerful characters, in a way.
If nothing else they added cool scenarios and flavour to the game.
I don’t know, the struggle of losing a homeland is very real for Malfurion. The struggle of having his mind split in two is somewhat the same for Medivh. Even Deathwing, with his paranoia and feelings of purposelessness, is incredibly real.
And it goes without saying, being powerful doesn’t mean you are flawless. That’s a whole other can of worms.
The credibility is actually hurt the moment the narrative becomes inconsistent and suddenly the world’s greatest and most powerful Archdruid is limited to fight the Horde with a maximum of three spells: Wrath, Bear Form and Entanglement.
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I think 10 players can do it easy.
Dont forget that Blizzard are Night Elves haters, and Sylvanas fans. I think Tyrande will try to revenge, but Sylvanas will one shoot her like Saurfang.
Also we already have one book, were no name orc archer was too strong for Tyrande…
btw Tyrande had her revenge © Blizzard
Yes. Me. We players are unbeatable.
Unless a quest demands otherwise. Then, you’ll get knocked out by a single, scripted bonk on the noggin’ from a diminutive creature of choice.
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To be fair though: Armies in Warcraft have become more and more pointless after or with the start of Cataclysm. Former elite units like the Kor’kron or the 7th Legion (who were actually tagged in gameplay as “Elite”-NPCs in Wrath and as such they would kick your butt) suddenly became mere cannon fodder.
I mean just for comparison: In BC the Dark Portal was held by a handful of regular soldiers accompanied by a draenei vindicator and a tauren shaman. They fought against felguards, infernals and all the other stuff thrown at them. In BfA I use a gyrocopter to throw bombs at Lightforged soldiers and kill them by the hundreds. Or in the Siege of Lordaeron when half of the Alliance army is killed by a single tank.
At the same ironically the death of so many soldiers has also become more pointless and without weight. When the Alliance and Horde armies at the Wrathgate got destroyed it felt like it actually had an impact. Nowadays? Each time Alliance and Horde battle and lose soldiers, ships and equipment you end up shrugging like, “Eh…why care?”
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The credibility starts getting hurt when they randomly create Uber Beings such as the Greatest and Most Powerful Archdruid, as this isn’t some Dragon Ball episode and we have to juggle with several races in a single story.
When you start with those characters, you create a domino effect that requires from writers to start throwing them around like crazy for balance, or randomly crippling them in order to facilitate some other plot.
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Or Archimonde, or the Lich King, or Deathwing, or Sargeras, or the Loa, or Kil’jaeden and World Shaman Thrall.
Welcome to Warcraft, gods and god-powerful characters exist.
And the issue isn’t them existing, it’s Blizzard mishandling them.
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There is no problem with having primordial powers, or almost divine beings, as these are all part of the games cosmology.
The issue is when they create characters that are supposed to be part of the mortal races cast, with powers that rival those of the above.
Because you have to mash them too with more mundane plots that tackle racial conflicts on a grounded level.
Thrall, Malfurion,…These are the problem.
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You sure? Because I’m really not so sure on that point anymore. The superficial drama with snarky banter and ridiculous stakes and power levels does seem awfully close to the direction they have been taking.
Indeed… it might even be the parts of the story they did better than others. The attempts to introduce scheming and depth were quite a bit worse than the anime stuff, if you ask me.
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Should’ve rephrased it as: It shouldn’t be Dragon Ball.
The problem here is Blizzard forcing to write them through these ‘mundane’ plots. Such as Archimonde in WoD. Again, it’s not about them existing.
Instead of finding the time to develop a credible way on how they can be defeated, Blizzard has their powers inexplicably drop, such as Archimonde on Draenor, or has them be absent whereas they should be present, like Malfurion in Horde confrontations during Cataclysm.
This is lame and lazy storytelling for everyone. Imagine if the Horde actually faced Malfurion with his actual powers, imagine the Horde shamans forming a massive army and finding a way to properly defeat him instead of having the Archdruid hop around being ineffective because the plot demands it.
It would have been an amazing showdown in a colossal duel of magic. It would have been incredible and perfectly in tune with the themes of Warcraft and on the Night Elf side they wouldn’t have felt as if their Archdruid was losing to jobbing.
But nope, we had to go the cheap way, it’s faster like that.
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Bottom line is: Power levels aren’t an issue. Inconsistencies that have them fluctuate randomly are.
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That is not comparable, Arthas power was ability to create army. He himself was almost killed by Illidan when 1vs 1.
Heck even Blizzard stated that if Arthas was facing Thunder King 1vs1 he would lose. It was the scourge which was unstoppable.
So we’re comparing apples to oranges. Arthas couldn’t SOLO armies himself.
You don’t have to be walking demigod to be prophet, heck Zul showed how to use foresight ability to advantage and by just being resourceful could bring enormous damage. He didn’t have to have power to solo armies to be dangerous.
It’s not really comparable. And this is why paragons are never made to be protagonists. This is why Gandalf wasn’t the main character of LotR but hobbit Forodo, and Forodo was fit because he could start his hero journey. Uber characters don’t make good protagonists because there is very little room for them to grow.
If someone is capable of soloing armies then it’s shown that true stuggles never reach him. Plenty of other people don’t have such a power. The danger of them not surviving among all other threats is much more real.
Honestly it would never be an issue, if they didn’t write Malfurion to be walking god. If Malfurion would be just extremely good druid that still has to be careful and who is still very vulnerable there wouldn’t be such posts of upset nelf fans to begin with. But nelf fantasy is that their prime characters are almost gods and so they’re therefore superior to everyone and they should never lose anything.
From meta pov it was a terrible decision to give such a power to begin with.
No mortal being should have such a power to solo armies, especially in univers where armies should matter.
Heck I even believe that the most powerful mages shouldn’t solo everything so long there are mages on the other side ready to cast counterspells. But for some reason the whole idea of casting counter spell seems to be completely alien concept for Blizzard writers.
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Which, therefore…is the power…to destroy other armies with his own powers alone (?).
He looked pretty capable of doing that in Icecrown Citadel.
You kind of ignored the rest of my comment there. It’s not just about being a prophet.
Comparable to what, or who?
The struggles these characters went through are no less of a struggle simply because they’re powerful.
So Neltharion’s struggles with his purposelessness and paranoia that led him to insanity wasn’t an actual struggle because…he could solo armies?
It doesn’t sound right to me.
Well with the same logic one could say that the Horde was likewise written to be powerful enough and suddenly with the resources to burn Teldrassil and beat the Night Elves.
It would have been better if it was just a band of tribal scavengers in a desert who fought with wooden sticks for the Night Elves to dispatch with ease.
Like, what is the basis here to determine who is entitled to have powers and who isn’t?
I’m going to repost something I wrote right above:
"This is lame and lazy storytelling for everyone. Imagine if the Horde actually faced Malfurion with his actual powers, imagine the Horde shamans forming a massive army and finding a way to properly defeat him instead of having the Archdruid hop around being ineffective because the plot demands it.
It would have been an amazing showdown in a colossal duel of magic. It would have been incredible and perfectly in tune with the themes of Warcraft and on the Night Elf side they wouldn’t have felt as if their Archdruid was losing to jobbing.
But nope, we had to go the cheap way, it’s faster like that."
I’m perfectly fine with Malfurion and Tyrande losing, even dying, I just don’t want the narrative to curl on itself to have them lose, instead of following a genuine path to their defeat.
And this counts for every character, Archimonde is probably the most glaring case out of them all for how badly his character was disrespected by the story.
Well I don’t know about that, statistics never seemed to matter in Warcraft, ever.
You’d imagine that after 34 or something years of constant warring and subsequent cataclysms nobody would have armies anymore.
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that’s the most likely outcome, either that or the players kill Tyrande
No it isn’t. It’s the army that he made that was the power.
Where exactly?
Because it was not explanation. Zul managed to come back to life too, and many other characters. Nerzul and Gul’Dan were not displaying as great power as he did and they also opened portals. Not just The Dark portal, but many other smaller portals which contributed to destruction of the planet.
I already wrote few times what I meant. Each character is supposed to be worried over something and have some sort of stuggle, Jaina had mental one, but I was speaking about having ability to completely change the tide of war by your power alone.
This is where is the problem and meritum of my point.
Deathwing is Dragon aspect, not a human, not an elf, not dwarf, I am not blaming a powerful ancinet Dragon who was tuned up by Titans themselves to be powerful.
I’m talking about mere mortal who wasn’t tuned by actual gods in this universe to have power to change the world and solo armies.
Horde didn’t have to be tuned up, Horde as whole contained a united forces of all it’s members who were fighting just one subfaction and additionally had access to Azerite which should give advantage, if nelves had advantage in fighting in their own territory.
It was not a plot hole or inconsistency that united faction could perform better against one subfaction.
If that was the case then nelf loss would be much harder for them if they would lose to just “bunch of scavengers”. But they lost to united faction that threw everything at them, their soldiers, their magics, their technology, shredders, bombs. Current Horde is not the same Horde that came to the shores around two decades ago. They advanced, they changed, they grew.
I already elaborated on that. In a setting where actual armies should matter, having being that can solo armies harms to overall narrative.
What is the point of sending troops and wasting lives when Alliance can just send Jaina and Malfurion to do things for them.
Such a ridiculous power levels are mother to plot holes and inconsistencies.
I’m not saying that they should be weak, but neither they should be this OP. It is causing more issues this way.
Don’t you think it would still create incosistencies? If Malfurion was able to wipe armies of demons - a few shamans shouldn’t be an issue?
I don’t think any genuine path would make their fans happy. I’ve read many times how nelf fans genuingly wrote that they believe either he or his wife should just go to Orgrimmar and wipe entire city and solo Horde themselves.
It wouldn’t be an issue, if nelf powers were tuned down from the start, to be strong but not for them to be able to wipe armies without proper outside temporary boost.
Well I agree for someone who was transformed by Sargeras and who additionally had assistance of pit lord and other baddies, being killed by group of raiders one paladin and 2 warriors was delivered very badly. But then again entire WoD was rushed and didn’t well thought through at all. The plot holes started at the very Dark portal we just passed. If all the most dangerous beings were trapped under portal - why freeing them? Why not killing them while they’re vulnerable and tied?
Secondly, we were meant to gather allies in WoD as it was meant to be suicide mission but the very moment we arrive to our starting Zone we open cross dimentional portals to our home, to get supplies and manpower.
Let me repeat myself- without any problems a cross-dimentional portals were created, something that needed sands of time and aspect powers to create.
That is true, this is the reason why they shouldn’t make expansions around end of the world events. And this is why I enjoyed MoP as it was more about adventuring and learning about other continent. And I wish there was “vacation expansion” out there.
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So the power to create armies out of nowhere is fine, but the power to destroy them isn’t.
Alrighty then. I see where we’re at.
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The power to create army wasn’t his, it was the artifact. The artifact that did much greater feats than something which necromancer was already capable of. And we didn’t destroy scourge by sending Malfurion to deal with them we had to face them with armies.
Obviously, but that’s the most boring answer.