In this article I would like to explore the connection I had with World of Warcraft’s most infamous villain Arthas Menethil.
This is going to be very ranty… so if you are not into that kind of a thing, you can skip the whole article and just hope that Arthas doesn’t come back to life and hunts you down!
Wrath of the Lich King, was one of the best expansions that WoW has ever had. The question as to why that is, has been constantly brought up.
Besides it being a superb expansion to the current game, with new gameplay elements, the use of phasing tech and the very first hero class Death Knight, I think it was Arthas.
The way that Warcraft 3 ended, with Arthas on the Frozen Throne. His journey there, the fight with Illidan… All those things made us want to find him and make him PAY!
The vanilla WoW and the The Burning Crusade expansions were all a prelude to that. We were all just biding our time until we became strong enough, good enough, pretty enough, to face him. Arthas broke our hearts, he who was the father killer, the false king.
And then he was dead… and still is… and what do we do now? Burning Legion is invading Azeroth… sigh.. What else is new. We beat them up several times before. We will beat them up again. Arthas on the other hand was the one who did the beating up and then he would just get away with it. There was nothing we could do to stop him. I expected him to do it again. To outsmart us somehow, to run away, maybe even hide somewhere in a far reaches of the void. I don’t know what his plans for life after Icecrown were. Maybe a chicken farm in Westfall? I don’t know maybe…
Now imagine this for just a second, Arthas does survive, and he disappears. We have no idea where he went, but we have no time to figure that out. The Shattering just happened, Deathwing is on the loose. The world is breaking apart. We have our hands full. But in the back of our mind we still have Arthas. He could show up at any moment and just strike the world when is at its weakest.
He didn’t show up when Deathwing was around. Perhaps when Garrosh went on his rampage… Not then either? Well then he must be biding his time until the Legion invades and then jump us out of nowhere.
How cool would that have been. Just that anxiety that he could come out of nowhere.
None of that suspense is there now. I know we will beat the Legion, I expect to. We have in past.
The exciting part about Arthas was: What if we can’t beat him? What other surprises does he have for us?
So after the Wrath expansion everything else although should have been big and scary. Felt underwhelming. It’s like the eternal battle between Batman and Joker. If Joker one day goes away… who cares what other villains are there. None of them are Joker, none of them are going to fit the yin yang formula….
Arthas, at least to me, is on the same level as the Joker. He is the Joker of the Blizzard universe. The cool thing about that is that I got to be the Batman. In fact everyone who went in to kill him in Icecrown was Batman.
Our Joker died and the day that they bring him back to life, is going to be the day that Blizzard sees the biggest return of its player base. Give us back our Joker!
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