Put it simply, why aren’t all the undead given free will just as the Forsaken were? The first time round, Ner’zhul was only weakened with an earthquake. This time, the entire thing controlling the undead with mind control is gone.
Blizzard have stated we’ll see some prepatch undead invasion event coming around which implies it’s going to be mindless ghouls on the rampage again. I’ve suddenly wondered why is that even the case? Why was it even a possibility at the end of WoTLK?
The Forsaken had their free will restored with a tremor – specifically because Ner’zhul’s mind powers were interrupted; and they were simple zombies, the lowest of the low in the Scourge ranks. Why would the rest of the Scourge simply be too mindless. Even that, if they did get free will, why would their first order of business to just rampage across the world?
Is the destruction of the Helm of Domination just actually an awkward oversight of ramifications not thought of ever since the Forsaken broke free in WC3?
Cataclysm showed us independent enclaves of freed Scourge operating in the Plaguelands. They seemed pretty onboard with the old Scourge program regardless of their freedom, going so far as trying to make new DKs and such.
Why? I have no idea.
Maybe was simple psychotic rage brought about by undeath, maybe their commanders were power hungry in life as well. https://wow.gamepedia.com/Ix%27lar_the_Underlord comes to mind as one such example.
Because from what I saw it was just old lieutenants carving out some turf for their own using their minions. We know a lot of commanders were not necessarily mind controlled. When destruction of the crown keeping every single Scourge undead mind controlled is gone, it’s a whole different affair. Suddenly the ghouls and zombies have independent thought.
We know the Forsaken are the strongest willed of the undead who broke free while others stayed as basic zombies. Some even just succumb to being a mindless animal in the end despite it.
The only counter I can think to this is the ghouls, abominations, other zombies etc are too feral and single-minded (hungry). But we’ve seen many undead with intelligence in the Scourge, including ghouls. We know they along with other undead are not just soldiers, but capable labourers and blacksmiths, merchants, cooks etc – there was a crude society within the Scourge.
It doesn’t seem like they should begin rampaging across the world, rather you’re suddenly giving the undead sentience again, why wouldn’t other Forsaken-like societies break out? Why wouldn’t more Scourge begin fighting amongst themselves for dominance over each other? They’re not supposed to be killer robots with a prime directive to take over the world if let loose; they were mortals once.
To me it always felt a bit like the Scourge was some sort of ant-colony. As soon as the queen dies, the other ants will start running around and flail untill they die. I feel as if Blizzard wanted to go for a similar theme here.
But some undead, like the Forsaken, are strong-willed enough to regain their free will instead it would seem.
Lets not forget; even at his full strenght the old Lich-King couldn’t control the Death Knights of the Ebon Hold, their lesser Undeaths(like Squire Edwards, Ghouls, Abominations, skeletons) and the more intelligent Undeath like Amal’thazad and frostwyrms.
Mind that most of those weren’t even present on Light’s Hope Chapels’ holy grounds and resided within Acherus the whole time up until the DKs retook it
What about Squire Edwards, Amal’thazad, Master Siegesmith Corvus? Because I cannot remeber them fighting on the ground with the Death Knights of Acherus, but they somehow broke free to
There were hints of his control being less than perfect however. The DK is tasked to murder an Argent Dawn member, but choose to hear them out in full when they plea for the DK to snap out of it. Ultimately the DK kills them because Razuvius gets impatient, at which point the Argent tells them to go through with it.
More than likely the DK would have been eventually compelled to do it or slain for hesitating in the first place, but I doubt Arthas knowingly permitted that little chat.
Because the plot demands a horde of mindless undead to get the attention of the Adventurers. Intelligence in undeath has (as you mention) always been a bit of a grey area, with circumstances dictating anything between mindless zombies and an actual chain of command - complete with individual personalities in some of the lowest drudges of the Scourge.
One major thing at WotLK Light’s Hope Chapel is that the whole vision we see in-game with Mograine and his father seems to be happening to several Death Knights such as Thassarian with the following.
‘‘The attack on Light’s Hope Chapel ended with a defeat for the death knights. Many of the family of the death knights were buried at Light’s Hope Chapel, and the spirits of their relatives rose to convince them to lay down their weapons. Thassarian was convinced by his father, Killoren, to stand down.’’
We will see how it affect the entire Scourge when the Pre-Event happens but we already know that several aspects have broken free such the Forsaken in Warcraft 3, the Death Knights in WotLK and later we had large portion in Cataclysm that seems to lost their connection to the Lich King after the end of WotLK.
The Darkfallen we faced in BfA that wished to join the Horde we do not know when they escaped the Lich King’s grasp but most likely with Cataclysm as well.
I think we should be mindful of the fact the “Someone has to wear the helm else the scourge will rampage across Azeroth” meme was introduced in one of the ICC pre-patches / WotLK patches to bring some weird suspense to the final confrontation.
At the time Blizzard wasn’t consistent with lore. The opposite.
Think you can easily regard the current SL events as a retcon/overwrite for those.
This not completly true
The Forsaken have plenty of dead who were… well “nobodies” never lived or done something that made their will strong, little people who was afraid, who were died, peasants, workers, inkeepers and so on
Not the posterboys of strong will if you asks me…
…I could be wrong tho
As you said
So this strong will part is a bit dubious… .actually I think it was simply luck:
In the wake of Illidan’s failed attempt to melt the icy continent of Northrend, the powerful energies possessed by the Lich King inside his Frozen Throne slowly began to decay. Inexorably this resulted in a partial loss of control of the more distant Scourge forces. The result was that many undead under the Lich King’s mental domination had their conscious will restored. Their spirits and memories were somehow returned to their undead bodies.
So what you say… is a legit question. Logically, all the Scoruge should return as a Forsaken
A tribe of murlocs broke free from the King’s grasp prior to wrath. I don’t think power has as much to do with it personally.
But, i’ve always assumed the vast majority of the scourge are mindless - ghouls, skeletons and zombies for example have never been shown to have much about them. And these make up the majority of the rank and file. I always thought they’d go berserk because they are all but feral, really.
The question is, why?
Why they are feral?
Before broke free all zombies were feral, and the intellgience was noticable only in the banshees, Dark Rangers and tho’ childish intelligence, the Abominations
But 99% (no, dont have proof, just a big number) of the Forsaken are made for zombies reganied their “soul” and sanity
Nothing that made these feral ghouls special… just were lucky, far enough to regain some sentinence
A newly raised dead is feral ,confused, etc, that we know from Forsaken lore, they have to be tamed to function basically (or use this anger and hate to “brainwash them”)
But the pre-existing rotting horde…?
Logically they too should became self-hating , horrified Forsaken 2.0
Tho possible, realizing what you had done as a feral zombie simply drives you insane and as a self deffense, your sanity and “self” simply evaporates insted facing the horrors and you revert back to a feral state
There was a quest that explained the Forsaken’s unavoidable fate is to slowly bacome mindless udnead again if not careful
I could guess at explanations (like Arthas was more objective driven to put big heroes through the same fall from grace that he did, therefore Scourge lieutenants on their own would do more damage) but most likely Blizzard just didn’t think about it too deeply!
Sylvanas breaking the helm of domination symbolises the hatred and spite blizzard story devs feel toward the veteran playerbase that actually demand decent storywriting, and the cinematic captures their message of “we don’t care about you, this is our story now.”
To clarify some of the confusion here regarding Warcraft 3.
‘’ Ner’zhul was losing his magical power. When he had pushed Frostmourne from the throne, he had caused a crack within the icy cask. Illidan’s spell had caused this crack to worsen and now the Lich King’s powers were rapidly seeping out like blood from an open wound. Half-way across Azeroth, residing over the unholy remains of his father’s kingdom, Arthas was losing power as well — his powers came directly from the Frozen Throne, through his blade Frostmourne, and his hold over the undead was also slipping.’’
OK that is the obvious we know yes but we’re discussing a deeper meaning.
The Forsaken are noted to be strong willed – it’s in their racial. Those of them that were not turned into mindless zombies once again. The stronger still only managed to retain themselves after undeath.
Not everyone in Lordaeron got their will back when Ner’zhul farted. I recall only those with the willpower to break free did, hence their culture around it. Doesn’t matter if they were knights or farmers, it was their will alone.
The problem here is the Forsaken were zombies, the lowest of the low. The cannon fodder meat shields for even ghouls; the bottom of the ranks. Completely mindless troops to hurl forward.
If the RPG was still canon we’d have a lot more to go off: https://wow.gamepedia.com/Zombie
If even the most mindless of the Scourge could become people like Forsaken then what’s stopping others? We know abominations can have free will, even some who have good rank in the Forsaken military. I know there are smart ghouls who can speak fluently.
Blizzard seem to draw a difference between Forsaken undead and Zombie undead - notably you see a few zombie model Forsaken NPCs around such as https://wow.gamepedia.com/Algernon and https://wow.gamepedia.com/Boyle. If they were the same, then using the different models seems…weird.
Their will/sapience didn’t come when the Lich King’s control was broken, it was always there. It seems to be a part of how they were raised in the first place. Forsaken-faction undead weren’t mindless, but the vast majority of the Scourge seems to be.
Edit: To add to why that might be, we know that undead like forsaken are created when a soul is bound, improperly, using necromantic magic, but we also see things like Sylvanas’ skeletons which are essentially automatons following set orders with no will of their own (you can still see them feebly attacking the abandoned alliance war machines in Tirisfal).
It’s straying into headcanon/supposition but I’d expect these are either entirely soulless - literally just powered by death magic, like construct golems - or formed not with full souls but tiny parts of soul fragments, so one (broken) soul could be split among many undead bodies.
For Sylv’s, I think it’s probably the former, but for the ‘mindless’ Scourge, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the latter for two reasons. First, Sylv’s seem dumber than even the mindless Scourge. They’re not rampaging in search of the living, they’re just doing what they were told to do, forever. Second, if Sylv had proper soul manipulation stuff then that’s like…I mean yeah she could do but that’s one step away from valkyr ressing things herself, so it seems unlikely.
And for that reason I think there’s a distinction between Puppets (Sylv’s troops at Tirisfal), Mindless Undead (Most of the Scourge) and Mindful Undead (Forsaken, Scourge leaders, etc.)
