One thing I should clarify is that in the retrospective, I’m not taking later works into account when reviewing earlier works, since the point is to go through each Warcraft work and its lore contributions as they existed at the time of their release.
I’m judging the games’ ability to stand on their own, without later supplemental lore. And WC3 absolutely stands on its own. The Arthas novel gives a more in-depth look into the events of WC3, but the game is still very enjoyable without it, and the game’s plot still makes sense without it.
Like I said in my review of The Last Guardian:
In the heyday of Warcraft, the books were there to give depth to the world and the characters. They were a bonus, letting you appreciate the worldbuilding, character motivations, and the challenges they faced. They gave us readers a sense of what was common and what was rare, what was well-known and what was mere hearsay, what was possible and what, as far as we knew, wasn’t. They contained mountains of lore that remains relevant even today. <…>
In the twilight years of Warcraft, the books have instead become, at best, unoriginal descriptions of sights we already see in-game, and at worst, the places where the writers stuff all their retcons and excuses and where stated character motivations and even internal monologue are blatantly overwritten by WoW two patches later.
Just my two pence, but the change in voice acting really doesn’t help?
I don’t like the VA they use in WoW or in HS or, I’m guessing as I haven’t touched it, the Reforged WC3?
It’s too… I dunno. It’s wrong. They picked the wrong person, or directed them badly, or something. The original Arthas voice lines are really good, he sounds conflicted, angry, saddened, etc.
The WoW one, in particulary, is too certain and borderline smug. Meh.
I liked that scene. He just invited her in and they shared the food and drink and just talked, so that she could go back to Blackmoore without getting in trouble. And her saying she’s glad the next king has a kind heart.
That is true! Game still works pretty well on it’s own, which is also not bad!
I always did wonder what happened to the original VA for Arthas. As Jebanza said, Patrick Seitz is good but it’s different. Warcraft 3’s version of Arthas sending Uther away still feels like the best one to me.
I think you nailed it again.
In many ways the old books have actually improved the game, expanding its potential. During Cataclysm, the Well of Eternity as a dungeon was taken entirely out of Richard Knaak’s WotA, and in many ways you can tell even Legion took many elements from the trilogy and expanded upon them. Heck, even the Escape from Durnhodle is a love letter to Golden’s book. Patch 2.4 was indebted to the Sunwell trilogy. And you can see that the devs’ worldbuilding benefited from these sources- usually. It was an excellent symbiosis and, yes, when you read a book these days I kind of wonder if the devs of the game even bothered doing the same?
And instead of expanding upon the world and its lore, it makes me feel like it is trying to fill in the gaps left by the game, wide and massive gaps, which really shouldn’t be there because it shows that the game - to return to the way in which you have been judging content - does not stand on its own.
Its a really old story at this point, but Justin Gross who voiced Arthas in WC3 declined the role again for WoTLK because he was offered “an embarassingly low” pay and his agent suggested to not take the offer. Allegedly it was substatinally less than what he got for WC3, which was also not much apparantly. And by this point, Blizzard was huge, Arthas was an icon, and they could easily afford to pay better.
There seem to be a bit of a split in how Blizzard treats or have treated Voice Actors. Alot of people are saying they treat them better than most in the industry, but when citing examples of how, its always the absolute biggest names (So Mercer, Bailey etc). They also allegedly supported the VA union strike, while being notorious union busters among their own employees.
Smaller or older VA’s seem to have been treated rather poorly or disregarded however. Any of the VA’s who didn’t follow over from WC3 to WoW seem to have never worked with Blizzard again, some citing issues or nothing at all, and there are rumors that they blacklisted them. Returning VA’s seem to basically be full Blizzard Employees.
And again, whenever a discussion is brought up on VA’s who like working with Blizzard or have treated well, it’s always the same and absolute biggest in the entire industry (Which Blizzard cant afford to treat poorly).
Wasn’t there also the thing with the old VA of Kael’thas who got accused of stuff, but then it turned out he was cleared from all charges? Cause I remember there being quite a thing about Kael’thas’ voice being changed during Shadowlands, and even his lines from TBC, like Tempest Keep, being re-voiced?
In this case he was cleared of legal charges but his behaviour and attitude towards the women he was around and the power dynamic he used on them is still considered major-league creepy behaviour.
Other promiment VA’s that didn’t return was primarily Sylvana’s VA, Piera Coppola. She is credited for a few WoW appearances, but those were archived sounds. Several other VA’s from various units did also not return.
The original illidan, Matthew Yang, didn’t return for TBC due to “Union issues” but later did and is now a semi-regular for other voices. Tony Jay(Terenas) passed away in 2006, but had voice lines for the old racial introductions in WoW as we know.
Carrie Gordon Lowrey who voiced Jaina got recast, instead providing the voices for generic human NPC’s and the Nightborne child Korina in Legion.
There were also voices people speculated to be re-cast but weren’t, such as Kel’Thuzad. Michael McConnohie voiced KT but had drastically different directions for future appearances.
Edit: Anub’arak was actually re-cast. Originally being Steven Blum, but Blum still did and does alot of other voices. New one was apparently Frank Welker.
There’s quite a few who have been re-cast since WC3 it seems, I know that indeed Jaina and Sylvanas and Illidan were also changed.
Speaking of VA’s there is one thing that still bugs me though, namely… Who the hell voiced Garithos and the human male from WoW? Because whenever I do a /goodbye and he says 'Till we meet again" I could swear the human male sounds like Othmar Garithos…
I don´t think that´s him, since his Wikipedia page doesn´t mention Warcraft, and there are also new intros from Cataclysm.
Wiki has this guy as original voice actor: https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Ted_Whitney
Interestingly, with the original VA dying, the new one only appeared as Terenas in Wrath, meaning the intros having voice of Terenas could be a coincidence. There are some voice actors who seem to only be able to do one voice, or are always asked to do the same voice every time they appear (Laura Bailey is an example of this, she can do other voices, but everyone always seems to want the Laura Bailey voice which isn´t even her natural voice). https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Earl_Boen
Is there any actual proof for this, or is this another loop of “she said / they said”?
To me as far as I know the situation was one of the accusers was proven malicious and completely false, the others either didn’t account to anything or it is indeed as you say. I’d like to know which.
But if it is still unclear then the man’s just as innocent as before. Until proven guilty.
so much better than some of the later ones, I dunno what went wrong.