All Horde ones are dead. Imagine how the community feels about it. Be glad that the Sons of Lothar are untouchable.
You either die a hero, or you live long enough to become a caricature…
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Doomhammer, Grommash, Kargath, Deathwing, Teron Gorefiend, Dentarg, Gul’dan, Cho’gall, Zul’jin, Fenris, Kilrogg, Tagar etc. those were the original Orc heroes from the first two games.
Depends on how they present it. The big problem with Sylvanas as mystery box was that they took way too long to explain what happened to her and in the end, it was disappointing and basically the “easy way out”.
With Anduin, it could be different, not to mention that he has to be an entirely different character.
Let’s say, he comes back to Stormwind, a bit taller, wearing a beard, worn out and tired, but is suddenly way more introverted and serious than before. He’s spending time in the cathedral, is happy to (for now) leave the throne in Turalyon’s hands. At some point, we even find him practicing Void magic. It’s obvious to everyone that something is wrong, but Anduin stays silent. After several unsuccessful tries from Genn and Jaina, Velen finally gets him to open up in our presence. Anduin explains what happened to him - we play through his Flashbacks in the same way that we learned about the SI:7 Pandaria expedition back in MoP. We play through key moments of his last fife years in the Maw. See how Sylvanas shared knowledge about the cosmos with him, things that Zovaal told her back then. Anduin still has PTSD and nightmares from his time as Zovaal’s puppet, so it’s a bit like therapy for him. They encounter and free tortured souls from other worlds. Anduin learns from these souls that all cosmic forces - even the Light - can be just as cruel as the Legion - a realisation that shatters his view of the cosmos entirely.
Back in the present, he asks Velen for help, tells him that he never thought the Light could be like this and that he doesn’t know what to believe anymore. That the Void started to speak to him and he wants to listen to the voices, who feed on his doubts . Velen, who can relate to Anduin’s crisis of fate, tells him about Argus and the lesson he learned from Illidan. He gives Anduin a pep talk and encourages him to talk to the Conclave and seek Allerias help in the mastery of the Void discipline. Which Anduin agrees to do.
Don’t think too much about the story beats, I just wanted to paint a picture of how they could tell Anduin’s story. It’s obvious that his “exile” is not just for his character development, but this could be a way to catch us up to his character development - maybe even bit by bit as a recurrent storyline that takes an entire expansion to play through.
Absolutely agree with that.
Well, there’s always the possibility that they turn Turalyon into a Light fanatic and get rid of him. Regarding Anduin, I’m still kind of pissed that they didn’t stick with the “Priest King” and layed the groundwork for another Paladin.
Well, Anduin is not a caricature YET 
Anduin is great. Alliance can be proud to have him.
Sounds fine, if you want Anduin to use the void. I really don’t understand how that improves his character, but it is one way to go. As I described in my own version above, I’d prefer to see him overcome the darkness that’s dragging him down, instead of accepting it as a perfectly good part of himself. His dark magics came from depression, stress, and the dark thoughts pushed to him during his time in the Shadowlands. I’d prefer it, if that didn’t come off as a good thing.
But otherwise it actually sounds pretty similar to my post above, so I can hardly argue against your methods here. 
We’re just aiming for different results, I guess. And I don’t think I would like what you are aiming for, but that’s a matter of taste.
Only in the sense that the possibility is there with everything and everyone. Turalyon stood by after Illidan killed the Naaru Prime without avenging it, supported his voidy wife through the centuries, and his “the ends justify the means” thinking actually manifested itself in supporting torturing civilians with void magic. He even accepted undead Faol, after meeting him. The game never presented a Light fanatic. They did set him up to have the potential to be a hardliner… and then they had him rule SW for 5 years without incident.
So yeah, at this point I think making Turalyon into a Light lunatic would come from nowhere, and you might as well make Shaw or Baine one. It wasn’t set up at all. That doesn’t mean they won’t do it, but it would either need quite a bit of character development, all in one direction… or it would be out of character, like many of Blizzards character decisions tend to be.
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They have Yrel already for the role of the light fanatic. They don’t need to bend other characters to fit in the narrative.
I admit, I didn’t read every post in this topic, but I would also agree with your version up there - I don’t even like my story very much, it was just an example for the way how they could tell the story. Flashbacks and “Let me show you what happened”-scenarious could also do the trick to catch us up with his “off-screen” character development. I don’t need to see Anduin become a new person in real time, if they let us experience the vital points of his story in flashbacks, I would be fine with it (as long as Rian Johnson isn’t involved in the storytelling 
).
So I’m not hung up with the whole void thing, it was just the first thing that came to my mind when I thought about where Anduin could go next.
That’s true. Even though a part of me (the one who bought WC2 as my first own video game) really hopes that Turalyon won’t end up as a lunatic raid boss, I’m looking out for Alliance characters that could actually become the baddies for a change. After all the Horde bashing and infighting, it’s long overdue to have the Alliance make some controversial decisions and - and right now, Turalyon would be in the perfect position to do just that. So I can’t help myself to see him as some kind of “Chekhov’s gun”.
I doubt they’ll do another “Keep the throne warm”-Vol’jin-scenario, there must be a reason for HIM to be Lord Commander, right?
I still would say that Turalyon potencially snapping and becoming a light fanatic wouldn’t come out of nowhere entirely (he’s lightforged, who knows what that could do) - but I agree that it would also seem weird after what they’ve shown us so far. On the other hand, we didn’t see Yrel’s moment of “enlightenment” either (pun intended). 
I am fine with Vol’jins story being over if it means Blizzard finally focuses on the non playable troll tribes instead.
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At this point I’m quite happy to effectively drop the factions, and Blizzard seems to agree for once. And really, it’s not like the Alliance didn’t have its villains. They just didn’t get the same buildup as the two prominent Horde villains. The Twilight Father and Fandral could easily have been a real threat, easily matching or outpacing the nobody that was Garrosh (nothing can outshine Sylvanas’ ridiculousness, though. I hope.). Blizzard just decided to cut their development, throw it to some novels, and kill them off in a single patch, instead of giving them their own addons. And maybe we can be thankful for that.
I guess you could try to sell me on the story, but looking at the last 2 supposed “faction wars” the originator doesn’t really matter anyways, we’ll pretty much instantly team up to face them. And with playable races that’s pretty much the only thing that can happen, if there is to be some resolution and content for both sides. Which hasn’t been less important, now that our guilds and raids are faction-agnostic. And really… both times this story has been tried it sucked pretty hard for both sides. Years of building up righteous anger against the playerbase on the other side, just to see it resolved with a “Well, after the boss is dead, I guess we’re square.”.
Maybe an Alliance/Light-themed raid might be pretty, but from a story standpoint? I think I’ll pass. Or do you have an idea to make it attractive? To save the concept of an open faction war in a world of cross-faction gameplay? Turalyon randomly going nuts and developing a loot table doesn’t sound like it, at least not without additional context that I really can’t think of.
That’s not a good thing though, is it? I mean, they gave her 35 years of offscreen-development, and her character was pretty minimal before that, so I won’t say it was out of character… it was just random cowpoop. I’m certainly not holding my breath to see her again. If we want to throw in a random light-themed raid though, I’d prefer it to be led by the character that already was randomly turned into a fanatic to the one that would have to join that club first.
If we’re talking Alliance vs. Horde on a big scale, I agree, we’ve been oversaturated with that.
But I don’t see a problem with smaller, local conflicts between the factions and the races. Blizzard has to keep a certain dynamic between Alliance and Horde, otherwise they could drop them entirely. And there’s always room for people like Fandral Staghelm or Archbishop Benedictus. Maybe some third parties who try to instigate another war to aid a smaller threat / a cosmic force - not in the stupid and overblown way that Sylvanas did, but with wit and manipulation.
You could also put the factions in difficult situations. Have human suvivors of Lordaeron demand to repopulate a part of their former kingdom - not as “objectively evil”, but also not without risks, since it would be against the interests of the Forsaken - maybe bring the Scarlet Crusade into it. I’m talking about true morally grey situations, when it’s not a good-vs-bad-problem.
Not entirely. But there has to be a reason why we have a radicalized Army of Light ready in another universe, a Light infused Sunwell in Quel’Thalas, a Lightforged Undead in the Forsaken council and a Lightforged Human as Lord Commander of the Alliance.
I don’t think they’ve placed these characters and factions in these positions for nothing.
I could think of a scenario where Yrel appears with her army and gains Turalyons trust (“Hey brother in the Light, aren’t we all connected through our favorite cosmic force? We can help you and we can help those in need of the Light and… the conservation of dead bodies?”)
As far as we know, the Alliance doesn’t know about the Lightbound and their role in AU Draenor, even might welcome them as allies. Yrel could try to manipulate Turalyon, which could lead to some tensions with Alleria and the Ren’dorei. Velen could try to keep the peace among them; the Lightbound could even reach out to Calia and the Forsaken (“Look, we can conservate you guys and stop you bodies from rotting!”)
And then Geya’rah and the Mag’har could sound the Alarm bells and then poop hits the fan.
It wouldn’t have to be a classical “Alliance vs. Horde” scenario - but they could still have tensions and smaller conflicts between the different races.
Me neither. As far as I am concerned, WoD had the second-worst story after Shadowlands and I hate what they did with Yrel and her Draenei (and the entire origin of the AU-Mag’har) - even though I really loved the zones in that expansion.
I just don’t think they established that only for the lolz. 
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