in vanilla he was a forsaken with a yellow hanky on his head. both he and his pack of plaguehounds smelled so bad that their odour actually harmed you.
now he’s a mean, lean, plot driving machine who looks suspiciously like one of blizz’s lead writers, except slimmer and with a nerd trenchcoat. also he no longer smells so bad that it hurts you.
when did this happen? why did this happen? is there any sign that this new, unimproved nathanos will be killed off soon?
Google “Dark Mirror” Nathanos story…
There is an official short story “Dark Mirror” that explains it 
It’s not a bad read either.
Yeah, this bastard just sacrifice his cousin for a new body for her waifu.
i’m a page into it thus far. i disagree. it’s like fanfiction.
This is just a speculation but it has been raised a couple of times that this story’s writer is a huge fan of Sylvanas and Nathanos is his “self-insert”. So the story might seem a tad… Biased 
But then again, think how Golden depicts Anduin 
so it IS fanfiction!
i’d heard that rumour tbh and thought “naw, can’t be, blizz are a major studio they’d put a stop to this if it ever happened”
but no. one of the senior narrative designers decided what WoW’s story needed was him in a trenchcoat in a weird love/death relationship with sylvanas.
lol bfa
Well. I think this is not incorrect.
I’ve read somewhere that they are happy with this story and they liked it so they, at least, see no trouble here.
It isn’t fanfiction it it’s from a official writer.
i’m sure they’re happy with it. just like i’m happy when my boss continually orders pallets of stock even though there’s six pallets of the same stuff sitting unopened in storage. “thanks for ordering that boss, that saves me a job! haw haw!” that’s what i say at any rate; in reality i want to drop the pallet on his head because it was a silly idea and should never have happened.
i reckon that’s what the WoW narrative team does when their senior designer comes to them and says “let’s put nathanos in every scene ever because he is the only horde character who anyone cares about”. they laugh, they do their job, then they go home and drink to forget.
Tender mercies of being alive.
Although I agree that he shouldn’t have gone through this unnecessary facelift, I like that his attitude pretty much hasn’t changed. He remains the elite agent of Sylvanas Windrunner that he has always been, begrudgingly offering respect to player-characters that earn it and treating them with scorn and distaste when they haven’t. Despite people complaining about his power level, he’s also always been a powerful character too. By design, he was an open-world faction raid boss that the Alliance had to gather forty or so players in order to defeat.
The real issue is that he went from a side-character that was out of the way and rarely interacted with, to one of the main faces of the Horde, which doesn’t really suit such an antagonistic character. He should be of the same level of narrative importance as Rexxar is in BFA, for example. He’s gotten far too much face-time for the type of character that he is.
Really though, they should have created a more iconic version of his old look instead of completely rehashing his appearance. Undead are supposed to be undead, they should look like half-rotten corpses, not discount vampires - especially the most iconic and important undead.
Key word being “should”.
But keep in mind that ugly characters are less popular than pretty ones.
This is why Sylvanas looks the way she does. She’s like a perfectly intact elf, in BoL cinematic she doesn’t look undead at all.
You might have a look at this, saves the frustration:
https://imgur.com/user/tekane/favorites/folder/6008517/wow/FX4poT6
Also the reason why he is on plenty of cinematics, he was even featured instead of Rokhan in Rastakhan’s fall cinematic.
So he could have a dramatic eye squint at Jaina, instead of a guy who in WC3 was fighting against Proudmoore.
And… being in Zuldazar while in previous cinematic he gave a dramatic speech in Darkshore “we will hold this ground for the Horde”.
The undead should be ugly and should be less popular than the pretty races though. They should be grim, cursed, grungy and unpleasant, even their leader, perhaps especially their leader.
They’re the last race that should be anywhere near the spotlight.
we used to do it with 10-20. iirc well-geared toons (tier 2.5 and above) could kill him in a 5 man group. he was a meme, some cranky old smell-bag who would antagonise horde players and chase down unsuspecting alliance with his smell-dogs. essentially he was a max-level version of hogger. he was never really an elite servant of the horde or whatever.
now he is trenchcoat mcgruff-face, able to kick genn greymane half to death and not be instantly obliterated by super-tyrande
He was absolutely described as the champion of Sylvanas in that old content. Sure, he might have been a meme but most of the characters from that period that are important today were memes back then. It’s just that this particular meme hasn’t aged very well and doesn’t do well at all as a spotlight character.
Blizzard has other ideas 
So they should be a cliché in your opinion?
Nathanos has always been like this. Once Vanilla server is out, go check his quests.
‘Worm’ is the mildest term he used to refer to the Horde player character.
And his overall new appearance is explained in Dark Mirror, where a Valkyr uses his cousins body to ‘upgrade’ him into a more resilient form.
Apparently, his cousin was captured by the Forsaken while hunting their kind in the Plaguelands.