Whether it makes sense or not, the bromance of Kel’Thuzad and Arthas will remain one of my favourite things about WoW.
It showcased that even heartless villains whose souls are blackened from all the horrible deeds thet have done, still have a spot somewhere in there reserved for friendships to flourish, particularly good ones.
This is a stark contrast to Anub-Arak, who is very much an unwilling servant and that dynamic is made abundantly clear as soon as Arthas meets him. He is a tool and an asset to be used, nothing else.
Kel Thuzad in general was always an interesting character until Shadowlands, as he was one of the few and one of the absolute first who willingly allied with the lich king. No mind control or domination needed.
Narratively speaking, we have already answered the question of “Are we stronger than Admiral Proudmoore?” at the climax of Act 2 by wrecking his base at Tidefury Cove, where he himself was present. Act 3 is thus entirely dedicated to defeating a guy we’ve already defeated, only for good this time. Maybe it would have been better to cut the Tidefury Cove quest entirely and instead transition from rallying allies straight to the siege of Theramore — which then could have been simply folded into Act 2 instead of making a separate, short Act 3.
I always found the Act 2 and 3 of the Durotar campaign to be a bit weaker than the initial. The story is nice, but it felt like the Act 1 map was alot more RPG focused than the other ones.
That campaign is ‘future’ blizzard generally tbh. They peak hyper early on a great intriguing opening… tread water for the next few hours/ years then end with either a wet fish or the most epic thing you’ve ever seen.
Unfortunately outside of the start there’s no real way to know what path you’re getting.
I think that’s because they’re more linear and the maps are smaller. In Act 1, there’s a large main map and more opportunities to do quests in a different order (the first three, in particular, can be done in any order). Act 2 is more linear and spread across more maps, with the main one being smaller. Act 3 is short and completely linear.
I also just remembered that the way the bonus campaign worked with different map transitions was also quite big for the modding community. Hivesworkshop used to have a project years ago to try and re-create WoW in Warcraft 3 using the same map transitions.
It got scrapped in the end, but they did make a couple of playable maps, including Teldrassil and Ashenvale, Stormwind & Elwynn and Durotar & Orgrimmar.
I found one archived screenshot from 2009 of Orgrimmar!
Warcraft is a hopeful setting. Even when things look bleak, the armies of the world are in tatters, kingdoms are burning and civilization is reduced to refugees fleeing across the sea, we know that this won’t last. The good guys will eventually win. Fortresses of evil will fall, dark lords will be overthrown, and the sun will shine bright again. The heroes of Warcraft, like Thrall, Jaina Proudmoore and Uther, embody idealism that is continuously tested by circumstances, but is eventually proven right. Traitors and violent maniacs get their due, and friendship and compassion is what ends up saving the day.
Warcraft can be dark, but it’s never mean, never cynical. This isn’t Game of Thrones. So far, only Shadowlands was dumb enough to mess with this unwritten rule by presenting an afterlife so bleak and so soul-crushing (literally and figuratively) that many people considered it horrible in its very conceit as a whole, even leaving aside the villain’s machinations. Shadowlands was also, coincidentally, the worst-received expansion in WoW’s history.
This is the end of Volume One, and I will now take an extended break. I can’t make any promises about when Volume Two will begin; it might happen in a month, or in three months, or in a year, or never at all. I severely underestimated the volume of text to write, and Volume One alone, covering just the RTS games and interim novels, took me almost a year.
At the very least, I feel I’ve given a logical conclusion to the part of the retrospective already written.