World Of Warcraft

I've mentioned this before, but I think it bares repeating:

Anduin is NOT High King. He is often treated as though he is High King, but that treatment is a mere courtesy.

This is an important consideration, because it means that for Anduin to lose his position it doesn't require some sort of grand act of defiance, it merely requires the other Alliance leaders to decide they are better off not listening to him and his authority over them evaporates in an instant.

I don't know if it will actually happen, but I do think it's worth regarding his position of authority as being extremely vulnerable to even moderate levels of dissatisfaction.

Course if all the alliance leaders decide to not listen to anduin then we;ve basically got a succession war on our hands.

is it me or is this expansion "mortal races are apparently extremely stupid and shortsighted"

Edited by Midgetsnowman on Oct 1st 2018 at 11:47:42 AM

Why's that? Nobody's threatening to remove Anduin as King of Stormwind

Test because the forums aren't letting me post

sucession in the sense that . Okay, if You;re not listening to anduion to coorduinate efforts, then who is.

because ten bucks says multuiple alliance leaders would decide they should be in charge of troop deployment

I've been deliberately ignoring the last few pages because they contain 8.1 spoilers. However, we had this exact conversation about Alliance leadership barely a week ago.

Anduin is de facto High King because none of the other Alliance leaders wants the job, nor do they necessarily trust any of their counterparts to do it as well as the King of Stormwind traditionally has.

Yes, if Anduin fucks up royally (pun intended), they might just decide not to follow his leadership, but all that means is that they go back to a democratic council, with each getting an equal vote. Really, that's what they have now, anyway.

It might make for an interesting story arc for there to be some kind of leadership struggle or power grab by one or more of them, but who? They all have too much respect for each other.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 1st 2018 at 2:53:28 PM

I keep wanting to say something but the forums give me a bad gateway whenever I make a post longer than a paragraph, weird.

I'm getting sick of you strawmanning the conversation. Try it again.

Much better

Yeah, I can see how that's infinitely preferable. Instead of just having one Alliance leader who doesn't know how to win a war, instead we have eleven Alliance leaders who don't know enough about winning a war that they're going to trust an eighteen year old whose dad was really good at battering people.

Truly, the Alliance is committed to the greater good of Azeroth.

^note  The ten leaders are the Council of Three Hammers, Mekkatorque, Anduin, Velen, Aysa Cloudsinger, Genn, Tyrande, Turalyon and Alleria, in case anyone was curious.

Edited by math792d on Oct 1st 2018 at 9:23:21 PM

I have been under the impression that the reason Anduin was allowed to be High King is because he was the most diplomatic candidate and, after his character development in Legion, would have the mettle to fight for peace if he had to; if Theramore hadn’t been bombed I would have assumed the position would have gone to Jaina.

Jaina is actually my top candidate for replacing Anduin should he lose his position of influence.

I actually could see a scenario where Anduin actually helps Jaina become High Queen (thus superseding his own unofficial position) in order to prevent even more radical elements from gaining power.

I just assumed Anduin was in charge because he was closest to the Undercity.

if you mean geographically, that'd be the Council of Three Hammers and Mekkatorque.

I think one of the motivations was a mutual agreement to prevent a power struggle between the leaders of the Alliance. Letting the position go through the inheritance line was the least conflicting way to do it.

Yeah, that's fair. They're lucky Anduin was old enough when Varian finally kicked the bucket for real.

Anyway, I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I do still hope that this is a Despair Spot for the Horde - not only because I am a Horde player, but from a story perspective, it sounds like they're already leaning pretty hard on Idiot Ball-ish reasons for the Alliance to not just defang the Horde permanently. (Admittedly, a victory on Zandalar does not translate to a victory over Kalimdor itself; the only way that would work is if the Horde leaders were held captive to guarantee compliance with disarmament, and that's never going to happen in the game). So I mean that in more of a story-beat sense - things are going pretty well for the Alliance right now and I expect some kind of turnaround in shortish order.

As long as it's by the right kind of Horde.

I think it's worth stating explicitly that it's never actually stated anywhere precisely why Anduin has the position of influence he has. We can make inferences and educated guesses, and I think your guess is a good one, but at the end of the day it's a an open question as far as what's actually in the lore.

Of course we never really saw Varian's ascension to the position of High King either, not really. People just kind of started calling him High King during MoP^note unless I'm mistaken the first mention of "High King" was by Tyrande in the...controversial A Little Patience scenario, but she says it in a way that implies the title was already an established concept.and we had to rely on inferences and Word of God to know what that actually meant.

I'm comfortable saying that the weird ambiguity of how the Alliance's upper leadership functions is one of the faction's major story problems. A big part of why I want to see a new High King^note or Queen, I'm not giving up on my High Queen Jaina Proudmoore theory yet appointed and supersede Anduin isn't because I want to see him lose his position or think someone else would be better suited to the role, but simply because seeing the process happen in game would clear up this ambiguity.

Edited by Falrinn on Oct 2nd 2018 at 10:21:50 AM

I just want to point out that one of the candidates for High King is Turalyon, whose resume for the job includes 'having achieved unambiguous victory over the Horde twice.'

Fair point. Though as it stands he doesn't really have a story arc in BfA. He's one of the Alliance commanders in the battle of Stromgarde, but that whole battle is kind of apart from the main story. And then he has his role as the leader of the Lightforged, but he's redundant with Captain Fareeya in that role.

That could change pretty quickly, but when it comes to predicting any possible new High Kings or Queens, story focus in the events leading up to such a transition is a very serious consideration.

Now that the editing issues that have plagued me should be fixed, I wanted to say this nearly 24 hours ago, even though conversation's drifted elsewhere.

Currently in datamining; following what happens in Darkshore, Anduin does eventually admit he was being indecisive and sends more than a token military force to aid the Night Elves and Gilneans, which Genn and Tyrande are thankful for in spite of being mad at him initially hesitating. So while the experience did chill them to their High King, they both take a "better late than never" approach and show no sign of wanting him to step down in an official capacity.

I wouldn't call "Not wanting to add a third front to the war when our forces are already stretched thin in EK and the islands" indecision or hesitation, but everything else just reinforces we aren't seeing an Alliance rebellion anytime soon.

Anyone find it ironic how Blizzard used to defend the killing off Horde heroes like Zul'jin, Kargath, and Cairne, with "Wo W will introduce a new generation of Horde heroes."

Only for the new generation of Horde heroes to also get killed off, leaving the Horde with pretty much nothing, forcing retired characters like Eitrigg to get rewritten for action related storylines.

Edited by Monsund on Oct 2nd 2018 at 2:42:53 AM

I wouldn't call Kargath a "Horde hero". Was he even a relevant entity before BC and WoD?