I don’t have a post yet for health reasons, sorry. Instead I have an announcement.
I have 7-9 posts left to cover TFT, and that will be the end of Warcraft Retrospective: Book One, covering the RTS games. Book Two, after an extended break, will start with the Warcraft RPG and then vanilla WoW.
Hugs to you, we will be here when you’re ready!
Your health comes first! 
So far, it’s been a monumental labour of love towards the franchise. Take your time off, enjoy the summer and tend to your health, Lintian! I’ll be here to read the next one as soon as you’re better.
Looking forward to your covering these with how indepth you have been with the RTS. Enjoy a well deserved break and wishing you a speedy recovery.
https://lintian.eu/2024/07/27/warcraft-retrospective-31/
Excerpt:
As a teenager, I was mad at Malfurion. How dare he touch Maiev — she’s the main character (and also really cool)! But now I see that I was blinded by protagonist-centered morality. While she may have been the protagonist until now, empathically, Maiev is not a good person.
All the way through, she never displayed empathy for anyone. She jumped to conclusions that the furbolgs and wildkin were driven mad by Illidan, and executed them without mercy. She jumped to conclusions about the satyr working with Illidan. She regretted helping Drek’thar silence the ghosts haunting him. She didn’t grieve for Naisha — instead her demise only marked the point when Maiev’s quest became personal. She left Tyrande behind and lied to Malfurion about her fate — and then clung to the urgency of stopping Illidan, because it gave her an excuse for her inexcusable behavior.
She may not be evil, and she’s nominally on the side of good, but that doesn’t make her a moral person, either.
And that’s precisely what, to me, makes Maiev such an interesting character. She’s actually morally grey, not moustache-twirlingly, World-Tree-burningly morally grey. And unfortunately, later media completely blundered this aspect of her, writing her either as an outright villain (in Wolfheart) or as just another night elf commander, interchangeable with the likes of Shandris and Jarod.
What a waste.
I’m so glad someone pointing out how horrible Wolfheart was for Maiev’s characterization.
Wonderful read as usual!
I read the story, and its a nice read once more. But, to answer your questions:
Why did Illidan not tell the elves what the plan was? Well, I think he was in a pickle anyhow. We later find out it was Kil’jaeden who ordered him to kill the Lich King, and the night elves would’ve probably gone berserk upon finding out Illidan was working for a Lord of the Burning Legion, the equal of Archimonde himself. So he figured he might aswell do it alone ( though I question why piss off the night elves this hard instead of not draw attention to himself).
Why not use the Eye right away? As you said, probably because he wasn’t thinking rationally anymore and wished to torment Maiev, but also, the Eye presumably needed lots of power to be used. The campaign itself even points out that he goes to Dalaran because of it’s crossover of magical leylines for that reason I believe.
Also, you mixed up a name there, when you say Maiev regretted helping Drek’thar, when it should be Drak’thul ( granted the names are -very- similar).
Thanks, fixed!
Another curious question is why the eye has the power to destroy the Frozen Throne and the Lich King in particular. Actually, what is the power of the eye exactly? When it is used, we see that it causes earthquakes and seem to be breaking apart and shattering the frozen throne and Northrend itself completely. But is that all it does?
But, why would the eye have this power? And since the artifact was in the Tomb of Sargeras, it predates the creation of the Lich King by Kil’Jaden by…quite a bit, so they shouldn’t have any correlation.
I assume it is simply an artifact of immense fel power, and using it to destroy the Lich King was probably just the equivalent of bringing a sledgehammer to deal with the problem.
After all, it’s only after this plan fails that Illidan reverts to a more conventional means of destroying the Lich King, namely by bringing an army to Northrend. Since at first he did not have Kael’thas and his Blood Elves, nor a secure seat of power in Outland at his disposal. Usually you do not want to wage conventional battles against an opponent who has the power to raise all of your fallen, especially not with limited forces and no place to retreat to if the plan goes belly-up.
Edit: And we will see it in the next campaign, that attacking Northrend with an army was never Illidan’s intended plan. He makes it clear to Kael and Vashj that he came to Outland simply to hide from Kil’jaeden, but it is only when the latter does find him again, that Illidan tries to spin it as “I was just getting more forces for a second attempt” because he had to make sure Kil’jaeden would not flatten him on the spot.
I think it is safe to assume though that the Eye had many more abilities than that, seeing as it seemed to call to everyone with an affinity for fel magic. Gul’dan was looking for it, and later on ( though not ingame) Ragnok Bloodreaver the death knight also sensed it when he , Fenris Wolfbrother and Tagar Spinebreaker were looking for the Jeweled Scepter of Sargeras.
I think this also makes TBC even more laughable than it already was with its plot later on. It’s already pretty infamously well known that TBC’s story was mostly just “We got no idea what to do atm, so here’s a bunch of old characters”.
But from that story, Illidan got stomped by the LK, and now completely certain that Kil’Jaden will murder him for his failures. So what does he do? He goes back to hiding at the EXACT same location Kil’Jaden already found him at, which is also a demon-controlled world and a pretty significant Legion base of operations.
It does make it look a bit silly in hindsight. The only reason I can think of is that, since he already had a seat of power there, he wished to keep it. It was his last refuge that he could go to, else he would have to be on the run once more with the chance of the Legion finding him once again. Hence why I assume he thought he’d be able to make sure the Legion could not cross into Outland en masse.
But, this is pure speculation on my part and trying to come up with reasons, since you are right in that Blizz probably just didn’t know what they were doing.
https://lintian.eu/2024/08/22/warcraft-retrospective-32/
Excerpt:
Garithos has no redeeming qualities. He’s a racist, incompetent, oafish, racist, weak-minded, arrogant, racist, tactically-suicidal, jerkass racist. In a story full of anti-heroes and villain protagonists, he exists as a character the players can totally, unambiguously hate — and fulfills that role well, being one of the most despised characters in the entire Warcraft franchise. It’s important to note that we hate and despise him as a person, because of his personality and actions; this is Classic Blizzard, not Twilight Blizzard, where we hate the writers for portraying characters a certain way. Garithos is intentionally loathsome, whereas despised characters in Twilight era WoW end up despised unintentionally because of bad writing.
This doesn’t acknowledge the rather vocal fanbase that Garithos has accumulated over the years, who put his xenophobia on a pedestal, claim that he was right about most things and use him as the poster child for a very Warhammer/Warcraft 1 take on Warcraft. You know, the idea that there is an endless war between the goodness of humanity and evil inhuman monsters, that can only be won if humans successfully eradicate the inhuman from Azeroth and reign supreme.
Garithos might have been designed to be hated, but there’s plenty of people out there who consider him based and truthpilled and etc.
I didn’t know that. I’ll mention it next time we see Garithos in the campaign (in three posts from now)!
Encountered these kind of people more than once in WoW, then tend to be very unpleasant.
But back on track, great post as always! The Blood elf campaign was never my favorite but it was always a pretty solid “middle” in my opinion. No major glaring flaws and pretty good and fun levels.
I do think the secret level even if it’s non-canon serves as a good bonus though, because without it, you literally just end up on the next level/the other planet with completely no indication of how you even used the portal to get there beyond “it happened” which can be a little jarring in timeskip.
It’s also amusing that the verdant orbs you complained about a little bit here ended up being Kael’thas biggest telltale signature symbol.
Here’s a few (relatively) popular videos from Garithos fans, which might give you some insight into how they think. If the videos are a little too meme-laden for your tastes, just read the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK4WaIO19KE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnWzk-ztTY8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW59x5Rdwg4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEBCIo-9IZ0
That third one is an immediate yikes, but so telling how these people think.
Vietnam flashbacks to Alliance rp’ers shouting “For Garithos” during rp-pvp campaigns.
But yes, I too am sad we never saw anything again of the Night Elves’ brief incursion into Lordaeron, or the battle they fought against Illidan at Dalaran.
I am ashamed to admit that I have seen all those videos before. The last two I found rather meh, but the first two were hilarious imho. It gets even funnier though, there’s a whole meme campaign series where Garithos ends up ruling all of Azeroth and has to choose whether or not to take or destroy the Helm of Domination.
Garithos did nothing wrong
By Lolitopbest