Real quick, a thought I had after this video went into post. The 9.2.5 cinematic with Anduin and Sylvanas is notable in that it's... actually not terrible. I mean, yeah, it's composed of Anduin moping, but the way he reacts to how he was dominated differently than Sylvanas did was interesting. It shows how two people can react to similar trauma differently without making it a pissing contest. Also, having him go "all that mind control and murder gave me the weirdest boner" is the most interesting he's ever been, lol.

Gotta be honest when he was first introduced I thought Anduin was gonna be the Alliance finally having a "reasons why you suck " speech given to them. A sheltered naive but ultimately good kid who could look at what the Alliance had done and said "what we did was not ok and we gotta own up to it" but I guess that's expecting too much introspection from blizzard

I know it's nonsense but I love the "Gay men can't be gentlemen" thing because my boyfriend is probably more gentleman than this guy will ever be

“How could you call this anything but spite?” Well, I mean, “homophobic” is sounding about right to me.

I don't normally keep up with WoW... So for a long time, I thought that footage of Anduin was actually _Arthas_ after being de-aged or some other "instant villain redemption" nonsense. Blizz sure loves their arian white boys, huh?

Many times I get more frustrated at missed opportunities than bad writing, because I can SEE the good story we didn’t get. All three characters discussed here have a heaping helping of both, plus problems upon problems besides. It’s a shame, because both dynamics could have been so interesting had they made Anduin actually good and moral, and not just puritan. Thanks for the thought-provoking video!

Tbh I’m not a WoW fan, I just like Mikaila’s commentary, but bc of this (15:51) I ship them out of spite

This story is especially disappointing, looking at him in MoP. I remember thinking he was a new interesting character because he was the perfect example of a sheltered, immature child that is kinda right about some things but really out of touch with reality about others. I was looking forward to BFA to see him have to lead the Alliance through a war, despite being a pacifist. I was also curious to see if he blamed the Horde for his father's death. And then he showed up on the scene and hardly did anything!! Almost zero character development shown despite this huge difference between his philosophy and the role he is forced to play. I've read better fanfiction :-(

What I'm about to say may sound a bit unnecessarily conspiratorial, but I think the glorification of Anduin's preaching against holding grudges is Blizzard's way of pleading to the player base to get off their backs for the scummy things that they did/were complacent towards.

Has the pacifist "empathetic" good-boy ever lead to interesting or not-bad characters? Cause whenever i encounter them in a story they're fucking garbage.

Their insistence Anduin cannot be gay while also insisting he’s the moral center of the alliance tells you a lot about how they feel about gay people and the morality of being gay. Christie Golden can go chew glass.

Would it be possible to add subtitles to your guys's videos ? I love watching them, and I feel like they could enhance the audio part of the video for me, as sometimes I can't hear things very clearly

I am already pissed at what they did to Sylvanas but if they give that gross ass ship legitimacy I will jump ship so hard.

To be honest, couldn't remember Arthas' name and thought this character was a lich king redemption name change/retcon cos we've written ourselves into a corner/etc. Instead it's just, narrative contrivance, author biases and however many layers of volleyidiotball.

Hey lily for a video in the future.Can you make it about how the load house normalized forgiving a bully?This is referencing Lincoln and Ronnie Anne.Since in earlier episodes Ronnie Anne bullied Lincoln a lot but when his sisters found out they acted all excited and said she was bullying him because she liked him(at the time that wasn’t true at all)and even after Ronnie Anne punched Lincoln and Lincoln told his sisters their advice was awful the episode still did a turn around at the end to “prove” that the sisters advice was good.And also in another episode where Lincoln was gultriped by his sister to apologize to Ronnie Anne because he said one mean thing about her.

If they ship Anduin and Sylvanas I will literally spit blood. What a disgusting ship.

Reading WoW favorably I would say Anduin gets a pass on any poor leadership or simple moral worldview because he's still a kid. He's only 18 years old of course he believes in simple morality. Of course, he gravitated to Sourfang a fellow dreamer with a simple morality. Of course, he doesn't know how to engage with others' trauma properly. and the fact that the alliance keeps looking to him for guidance even though he has no experience is an interesting story set up for his growth into a more rounded character. Reading WoW unfavorably I would say that all the above means nothing if the writers keep focusing on him being a Jesus figure and audience stand-in instead of a person. And unless the writing gets a lot better soon we'll have a story of Sylvanas sacrificing herself to save Anduin or something as equally trite.

Binge watching your wow rant videos is making me realize that I don't love World of Warcraft, I love the *idea* of World of Warcraft. This setting keeps throwing such cool premises and ideas at me, backed up with a really solid art direction that has to be one of my favorite aesthetics ever, and then... Doing nothing with them, or doing worse than nothing with them. Well, I love the idea of World of Warcraft I fell in love with when I was around 12 or 13, and love the friends I made roleplaying in this world.

So weird that Brad Pitt is the leader of the Alliance now

It’s Fucking Hunter from The Owl house all over again Goddammit!!

This should be interesting. I originally liked Anduin, but at some point during BfA he became a bit boring and poorly-written (as did many characters at the time) yet somehow turned into one of the most overrated characters in the game.

Honestly, not familiar with War craft overly much but I keep thinking Anduin is Arthas or whatever that frosty asshole's name is. They look too similar.

Personally I like him the young ruler that has to live up to his father’s reputation, and that’s it I don’t play WoW anymore I just watch the lore from a far

That is literally all kinds of oof

We need to get #FireTheWoWWriters trending.

Anyone read the side story that's supposed to be the bridge from Shadowlands to Dragonflight? It's called The Eternal Vow. Golden gave a twelve year old a drinking problem. Bleh. Oh, and I headcanon Andy as bi. I find him being Sylvannas' rival laughable. In their cutscenes I kept expecting her to give him a bottle and a blankie.

Was that a jazz version of living tombstone's remix of "discord" by eurobeat brony lmao? Amazing!

I awlays found the concept that Anduin would just get to be the leader of the alliance through primogeniture especially offensive. Doubly so, seeing as Tyrande has been leading the Night Elves for, um, 12000 years or so? Do you think, maybe, she might have picked something up leadership-wise during that time period? The very idea of a some squirt like Anduin being the "superior" of a creature like Tyrande or Malfurion is nuts to me. They've been alive for 15000+ friggin years! I call them "creatures" because I truthfully can't even fathom how the mind of a being that old would work. That would be like me taking orders from the equivalent of a mayfly.

My conclusion about this video: Oh I want to see when you talk about the sylvanas's book

Ok I’m gonna say it he gives me Arthas vibes

My character took one look at Anduin and thought he was a wet cat, the fact that he seemed to question the sanctimonius bs of the alliance gave her some things to think about...sad that he became the stand in holy moral compass for white dudes that he is today. Can't say I'm surprised though. Not entirely sure where the hell christine got the idea of a gentleman not being gay. Like. Hyper cisstraight men are usually the opposite in my experience???? Most dudes that are DECENT tend to be LTBT+ leaning from what i've seen??? It's most likely due to a toxic masculinity thing but where the fuck are these genuine 'gentlemen' straight dudes??? Y'know, that aren't menimists of one shape or form? smh Also also why is everyone salivating over the white guy? Wrathion's more my type.

I'm curious, who do you think should've succeeded Varian as High King or Queen of the Alliance instead of Anduin?

Kinda wanna nitpick that the Zandalari fleet was taken out mostly by the gnomes, not Jaina. Point remains the same really, Anduin's a character-void.

Anduin is suppose to become Rexxar at some point but I'm the only crazy time traveler that payed attention in the mop questline

I haven’t played wow seriously since the end of BFA, so I have no idea with what’s going on in shadowlands but most of what you’re saying compared to BFA sounds right. Anduin, just from an objective standpoint, is not a well written character. He doesn’t have any weaknesses. The writers could have it be so his naivety is the main issue he has, because realistically, in the real world we can’t all agree on any one single thing so it’s reasonable to assume that it would be the same in the WOW universe. He would have to come to grip to the fact that there are some people that can’t be redeemed. Or maybe he can’t come to grip with it and it causes people to die, it doesn’t matter. But nothing like that ever happened. He’s always the morally correct character no matter how incorrect he is. Good video, wasn’t sold on it at first but it makes sense.

19:28 Wait, *_WHAT!_* I'm just too out of the loop if this is the first I've head of it.

I'm so fu***ng addicted to sylvania. I blame you for it >.>

nice video dude!

In the words of Catherine the great: beat the fuck out of Arthas an blizzard Ty

I have never been into WoW, and boy howdy is this making me glad that I haven't! Sounds like an absolute disaster zone here! Always love hearing you two bitch about it though! Genuinely. It's just a lot of fun to hear you two get fired up! But also... Blizzard forcing Alduin and the other guy (I'm sorry, I don't play this game and I don't see any comments near the top of the section that say the guy's name) to be apart from one another in such a comically extreme way... I feel like this is just fodder for the shippers...? Because honestly to me it sounds like they have a forbidden love, the forces of Blizzard being the one true evil keeping them apart! I feel like you can read all of this as Alduin engaging in some of that toxic 'no homo' masculinity and so is overcompensating in his attempts to convince everyone that he's straight and totally not in love, guys! Of course, you're not going to stop the shippers either way, but Blizzard's insecurity makes me want to ship these two out of sheer spite! And I know nothing about them! (Other than what is discussed in this video.)

I guess your happy a lot of the writers you mentioned in this video are now gone. I just want Dagren to be a cool character because we rarely get dwarf lore/story. Moira too.

Well they did let Anduin out of hell and he’s has drab as ever.

Every time I think about how much changed for the worse narratively in BfA, I get more glad I jumped ship(due to monetary reasons) at Pandaria.

Why do I feel like “Anduin Wrynn” is a character I know in Hearthstone?

Imagine actually being passionate about modern WoW lore.

As a Cis Het white male I can say with absolutel fact that, I don't mind diversity if done well and we already have a white savior to look up to, he was big 2k years ago and people haven't forgotten so no need to make more, least not as on the nose

I would argue that Anduin really encapsulates everything wrong with blizzard and the games industry in general; incompetent leadership, constantly spewing platitudes, gaslighting, racism, and taking away screen time and development from the much more interesting women characters. I feel like characters like Anduin really only exist to indoctrinate others into this male-centric mindset. I am so tired of the game industry's BS and ready for some good, wholesome bingo love.

oh that's pushed

What y’all are forgetting in this video is the people that made World of Warcraft great have been gone for over a decade now the current things coming out the expansions are written by literal pretenders to the throne

Well, you're not wrong. Unfortunately.

You are my spirit animal as to why WoW lore is complete trash these days

This is going to sound weird, but the way these three characters are portrayed is almost 1:1 with Dimitri(Audin), Edelgard(Sylvanas), and Claude(Rathian?) from Fire Emblem Three Houses. Its so similar its scary

I dislike Anduin I think he is annoying and I also agree with everything you said in this video.

the only real savior for BFA in my eyes was the release of Zandalari trolls as a race and the whole Drustvar area and storyline...... mmmm delicious. Otherwise they fucked up Aszhara and giving us another damn old god as the main enemy.... Aszhara should have had an entire expansion dedicated to her and only her. N`Zoth should have been the second Enemy after her.