“I will give anything or pay any price…”

“…if only you will help me save my people.”

This is one of many quotes from Warcraft III by Arthas that quickly and utterly solidified him as one of my favourite video game villains of all time… and I’ve played a lot of video games. The first human campaign of that game follows as Arthas, still an aspiring Paladin, sees the rise of the Scourge and watches as Lordaeron is gradually torn asunder by the devastating plague. You watch him try his best to contain the situation, but always end up just a little too late… and then you watch him take one step too far with the culling of Stratholme. Mal’Ganis reveals himself to be one of the driving forces behind the Scourge, and so Arthas goes to Northrend to gain revenge on him, finds Muradin there, tracks down Frostmourne, loses his soul and goodbye humanity!

The whole story was handled very well. You’d see Arthas do his best, but still fail to contain the plague even after killing Kel’Thuzad, who was more or less responsible for corrupting and destroying Andorhal and triggering the entire thing. Finally, his methods become extreme to the point of massacring a city of innocents. Sure, they were going to become undead anyway, but you’d think there had to be a better way, and calling Uther the Lightbringer a treasonous bastard in the process didn’t really help things. Arthas alienates those he cares about in a slow, arduous crusade just to make sure that the Scourge is ended and his people are saved. Yet by the end, he falls into the hands of the Lich King himself when he takes up Frostmourne to stop Mal’Ganis and becomes consumed by what he was trying to stop, right up to the point where he kills his father. Seriously, listen to that voice acting. They did a really good job on that.

The story didn’t end there, though, which is why I continued to like Arthas so much. You saw his fall from grace, yes, but then you saw his actions once he’d accepted his fall… and you saw just how well he thrived there. The undead campaign is exceedingly fun as you go around corrupting the remnants of Lordaeron, killing Uther the Lightbringer himself (with another epic Arthas quote), invading and ransacking Quel’thalas, and ultimately summoning Archimonde into the world to have him obliterate Dalaran. It was a good time for all concerned and I really enjoyed the game and adored Arthas as a character. He was well-written, well voice-acted, and overall a very interesting figure to spend half the game focused on.

Arthas then showed up and kicked even more ass in The Frozen Throne, but I didn’t like that game nearly as much as I did vanilla Warcraft 3 so I won’t bring up too much of that. He was still very cool and well-handled, though, and I remember sitting there in awe of the cinematic where he beat up Illidan and then became the Lich King. Even though I didn’t like most of the game, there was no denying that it ended on an incredibly epic note and only further solidified Arthas as an awesome character.

Yet it occurs to me that despite the fact that I started playing World of Warcraft looking forward to the day when I could travel to Northrend and confront the Lich King and then spending two years playing in an expansion which had me impede, assault, and ultimately defeat him… I walked away with so little of that sentiment remaining.

Arthas was awesome. Well written, well acted, an interesting and powerful hero to follow for the better part of two games. He was arguably the biggest threat to the world of Azeroth this side of Sargeras and most lore nuts who played WoW like myself were counting down the days until his confrontation.

But… in hindsight, it was all so lacking.

Wrath of the Lich King was a pretty good expansion, I’ve had fun with it, I’m not saying that. But really… the most interesting raid, to me, was Ulduar. Icecrown Citadel was good but not handled as well as Ulduar, even though the Lich King encounter itself was suitably amazing… but I tuned out most of his dialogue. Only one line of the Lich King’s quotes truly stands out for me now that he’s been defeated, the final line he says before you tip him over to 0 HP.

“Now I stand, the lion before the lambs… and they do not fear. They cannot fear.”

Actually, most of what he says in the final outro of the fight with him is pretty cool, but that one final line is my favourite. That was done well and was a suitably poignant end to such a great villain. Yet… that’s one of the very few and very rare quotes that I retain from Wrath of the Lich King that the big cheese actually delivers himself. There are very few stand out moments or lines that he delivers in WoW that I’ll remember beyond it, yet by contrast there were a lot more… facepalm worthy moments, I suppose.

Blizzard recognised that Illidan was an interesting character but he was practically unseen for most of Burning Crusade, right up until you killed him in something of an anticlimactic event. They wanted to establish Arthas as more of a threat, more of a villain, and actually give him a presence up to that point. You’ll see him at least once in practically each zone of the game as you quest, giving you all sorts of threats or insults or whatever… and then he’ll usually back off and run, or spare you, or let you as a mere insect in his gaze run around a little longer. Yes, he gets more presence as a villain and does some pretty interesting/cool things, but the fact that he constantly spares you seems kind of stupid. You could justify that with his ultimate aim, though: he planned to have those who fought their way to fighting him at the Frozen Throne killed and raised as generals of the Scourge, so he wouldn’t want anyone with too much potential killed off too soon. But couldn’t he just have killed you earlier anyway and used you then?

Another thing that annoyed me about how they presented Arthas was the change in voice actor. Arthas has an incredible VA in the strategy games, and I don’t even mind the Lich King’s current voice… even though the guttural rumble does start to hurt after a while. What annoys me, however, is that they felt the need to change the voice actor for Arthas himself in the Caverns of Time flashback. The opening to that dungeon is one of my favourite scenes in Warcraft III, largely for the excellent acting. In that scene Arthas sounds like he’s committed to taking that first step into darkness. But the WoW version of that? The new voice actor just sounds like a whiny teenager. Why they felt the need to replace the VA is beyond me, but shortly they could have hired somebody better? I hate that instance just for the sheer annoyance I feel at the use of that voice.

I don’t know. Perhaps it’s simply the nature of an MMO as opposed to an RTS in which there’s less focus on the characters and the lore which means Arthas/The Lich King just isn’t as interesting or likeable compared to his RTS counterpart. Or perhaps he wasn’t even that bad a character in the MMO, but just didn’t compare to his RTS self and it was just too difficult for me to compare them objectively? Years have passed after all, and writers no doubt come and go in Blizzard. Just because something isn’t *as* good as something else, doesn’t make it bad. It’s hard to say, though… but one thing is for certain. Arthas was, to me, a much more satisfying character to deal with in Warcraft III and Frozen Throne than he was in Wrath of the Lich King, and it’s kinda sad that this is the case.

In a way, I’m kind of glad that Cataclysm doesn’t focus on a character with as deep and meaningful a backstory as Deathwing. Yeah, there’s plenty of lore around for Deathwing, but that falls into two categories: It’s either stuff that we haven’t seen in any game and was just written about to further the lore, or it’s contained in books written by Richard A. Knaak, who sucks utterly as a writer and whose work I simply cannot stand. Deathwing is a stupidly annoying character and all the books he’s contained in are complete jokes, so any new lore established in Cataclysm will not, in comparison, be trashing stuff that I actually treasured.

Next post will be more about the lore, methinks.