So there's a famous scene in Warcraft 3 where Arthas, upon seeing that grain infected with the undead plague had been distributed in Stratholme, orders the city purged.
There's some controversy over whether Arthas was wrong for doing this. On one hand, if you play the game, Arthas can come across as something of a John Snow-like character in the sense that he's the only one that seems to be taking the plague and the undead Scourge as the dire, even apocalyptic threat that they actually are. In the Stratholme level itself, the citizens are actively turning into the undead as you meet them, while the Scourge are present and active in the city, lead by Mal'ganis who is swelling their numbers with infected citizens. This might lead a player to conclude that Arthas is doing what is necessary to prevent the Scourge from getting a city-sized army and preventing his subjects from becoming the mindless slaves of the Lich King. A mercy kill, if you will.
But there are many, including the writers who seem to disagree. In fact, the guy who wrote the mission apparently thinks its obvious that Arthas was in the wrong and that you're a psycho if you think otherwise.
What causes this disconnect?
>>42076It's less being corrupted by "power" and more Arthas taking increasingly drastic steps to destroy Malganis. It's been 20 years since I played it but Arthas already had power. He was a prince, in line to be king, and a powerful paladin. Him killing the citizens of Strat is an extreme measure justified by the exigencies of the moment, but it's taking that step which further justifies every other extreme measure up to and including taking up Frostmourne.
Iirc the Lich King armor is possessed by an orc shaman that's working Sauron-like to corrupt him. Purging Strat is essentially the moment he succeeded, because every subsequent atrocity pales in comparison, and is back-justified by the desire to punish the demon responsible.
>>42060this tbh. The gameplay is presented as "every citizen is already infected and turning into undead", which makes his action actually kinda reasonable from the player perspective if still horrific, because you're still killing innocents who havent turned yet (in gameplay you actually see them all actively turn before your eyes if you take too long). Truth would be they'd also be killing a bunch of people who wouldnt have eaten it and wouldnt be turning, which makes it a lot worse.
He also goes straight to mass killing rather than try to separate people and save as many as he can, and dont even try to put his allies and friend in front of their contradiction with, "ok, what would you do then? would you rather wait to fight the undead horde and loose all our men?", and straight up try to use his authority to force a "do this or you're a traitor" (not even, you're a coward who cant take his responsibilities, but a traitor because you refuse to kill the innocent citizen of your kingdom because a prince said so).
So ultimately, gameplay does not serve the story there, and arthas being an arrogant cunt clearly didnt help, but he was right from a purely rational pov.
>>42081good analysis too
>>42146>"I deliberately made the mission into a genocide race with Malganis to show you Arthas is no better than him"That's just the thing though, right? Mal'ganis
isn't killing the people of Stratholm. He's raising them into his undead legions. The race just further enforces the fact that you're saving the people of Stratholm from becoming the mindless slaves of the Scourge!
>>42058It doesn't fucking matter.
Whether Arthas was right or wrong didn't fucking matter.
In order to progress the game you need to side with Arthas.
It would be a different matter if you could, you know, choose?
But the game didn't let you.
And let me tell you this. I hate games that do this shit. Drop the nuke or you wasted 60 Euros. Then get shamed for it. Get shamed for playing the fucking game. Remove this post-modern shit from my games.
>>42058Because Arthas wanted to kill EVERYONE because he didn't care enough about his people to take even a second of effort to maybe think of a solution that would actually protect his people.
he didn't even bother to figure out who even ate the infected grain, how many people there were, etc etc.
If you watch the scene, you'll even see that he made the decision immediately based on seeing 4 guys carrying grain. He didn't even bother to look into the situation. Genocide was his very first and only idea.
>But he was probably right! they probably ALL got infected!he had no way of knowing this. he made the decision the second he saw a few guys carrying a box. even if he was ultimately correct in his final decision, his math was entirely wrong and he gets no points. He won't be right every time, and he had no way of knowing he was right this time, which means he's a fucking psychopath that can, will and HAS chosen genocide as a first resort, and genocide precedes even minimal investigation on the subject.
Arthas is wrong because he does not have the knowledge that we have as players. from his perspective there was no way of knowing who got infected, not because it was impossible to tell, but because he didn't even bother to check. I'm pretty sure he didn't even enter the city before deciding genocide was the plan.
>>42253He didn't do it because of four guys, he did it because those four guys were the last people hauling off grain that had already been distributed throughout the city.
This is something he says directly during the mission.
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