I don't understand why that would be harsh: before Arthas started killing the Stratholme citizens he couldn't be certain the plague DOES cause zombieism. He saw undeads, and the food supply crates. At that moment Uther only saw a VERY bad idea, and he was kind of right to flip out.

That article is fake??

Course this is also the same company that can't decode the difference between Immortal (does not die of age) and Indestructible (cannot be corporeally damaged) and decided that would be the basis of the "big change" in the Night Elves after WC3.

She's the High Priestess of an ancient Theocracy; hell she probably sentenced Illidan herself.
Rolling up and making plain, "yo get the horned asshole one of those white canes and have him tap his ass to the door -we need a 3rd 'hero' for this chapter" should have been enough.

@Kilgore Trout
To me the joke is that in WoW, which parallels WC3 and is the most thorough depiction of Night Elf culture to date, Tyrande is the supreme authority figure in the nation.
NE's don't have a President, or a Prime Minister, or an Autarch et al.
con't...

[url=#user_comment_358581]@blueriver[/url]: Well, Arthas did suspend Uther and his paladins and told them to GTFO. He was also going rather crazy already, with the whole revenge boner, and seeing an entire city infected probably pushed him over the edge. That said, Arthas is still an idiot who's ruined everything he ever touched.

@Kenpachi RAMASAMA: That sounds almost completely right to me, except I'm pretty sure the Dreadlord arrived after Uther and Jaina had left.

[url=#user_comment_358627]@Beretta249[/url]: Yes, the use of lethal force by Tyrande was pretty dumb. There had to be a less bloody way of freeing Illidan than that.

[url=#user_comment_358635]@RVN[/url]: Initially he didn't. But by the time of WoW he's gone from a guy who just wanted to help his people escape persecution to "MWAHAHA, I AM GOING TO SELL OUT MY PEOPLE AND HELP THE BURNING LEGION CONQUER EVERYTHING, BECAUSE I DECIDED TO BE EVIL JUST FOR FUN!"

[url=#user_comment_358627]@Beretta249[/url]: Agreed on Tyrande. It's kind of like a mission in Starcraft Brood War where you fight Artanis and only talk things out with him after a protracted battle that has left many Protoss dead. Whoever chose to employ lethal violence in both cases was being dumb.

Kael'thas did nothing wrong

[url=#user_comment_358625]@Sartharina[/url]: Huh? It deters people from doing things like torture and using white phosphorus. I don't see how preventing those things is bad, and it protects everybody, not just strong and powerful people.

[url=#user_comment_358625]@Sartharina[/url]: Huh? It deters the use of white phosphorus and torture. Against ANYBODY, not just strong and powerful people. And it also means that people who do employ those methods and others (such as Cheney) could possibly be made to answer for them, instead of protected.

[url=#user_comment_358625]@Sartharina[/url]: Huh? It deters things like torture and using white phosphorus, so I don't see why it's a bad thing. It also means that Dick Cheney can't go to certain places without risking arrest, so rather than protecting somebody strong and powerful who did awful things, the opposite is true.

[url=#user_comment_358625]@Sartharina[/url]: Huh? It deters things like torture and using white phosphorus on people, which I think is very good. It also means that Dick Cheney risks being arrested if he goes certain places: that is a strong and powerful person who would be made to answer for his crimes, not protected.

What Kenpachi said. If that story has a changed, it did so under WoW Retcons. Warcraft 3 made that "whoa now" warrings from Uther and Jaina were VERY clear, that Arthas' blind drive to hunt down anything Scourge related had already warpped him and Straholme was the breaking point.

[Cont.] So Arthas was like "AUGH DREADLORD IS HERE JUST MURDER EVERYONE" and Uther was all "I really don't want to indiscriminately kill innocents under the possibility that they're infected, I'm out" and Jaina was like "Yeah this is getting too raw for me", so then Arthas got all emo.

There's a bit more to it than that Jo. Arthas found out about the tainted grain then rolled in to Stratholme like "EVERYONE'S ALREADY A ZOMBIE KILL THEM ALL" and Uther was all "Hey that's a bit extreme we should isolate the infected". But then the Dreadlord guy showed up and was all "Ayy lmao"

I was going to jump into this, but fuck that:[url=#user_comment_358615][url=#user_comment_358615] @MangoMaster4[/url][/url] has it right. Also Tyrande massacring Maiev's troops was even dumber for being less even plausibly necessary.

@Kilgore Trout: Written by the strong and powerful to keep the strong and powerful in charge by forcing those too weak to play on their terms to play on their terms anyway.

@Bart Stabwound: No moral high ground in life or death struggles? Oh silly me, I must have just IMAGINED that there were things like the Geneva Conventions and war crimes charges in the real world.

Geez, look at all the people that are going to get their faces eaten in the zombie times. You wait for someone to turn when they get infected, you are going to have a bad time. There's no moral high ground in a life and death struggle.

Hearthstone and WC lore in the same strip? Nice.

[url=#user_comment_358615]@MangoMaster4[/url]: What exactly was unreasonably and stupid about what Arthas did though? He had seen what the undead were, what they did to his kingdom and what would happen if allowed to run unopposed, he was then betrayed by everyone close to him for doing what had to be done.

This isn't the 1500th they start at 4. I've really enjoyed reading the wow lore discussions in the comments thanks everyone. The Illidan thing has always confused me, I too wanted to see him less of a 2 dimensional pure evil sort.

Congratulations on 1500 strips Jo! I hope there is many more to come =D Nice Warcraft comic btw definitely was not expecting that =)

Some people like to look on the argument from the side of either party, but they were both incredibly incorrect in how the situation was handled. Uther failed as a teacher, because he didn't manage to instruct Arthas on the situation and Arthas just failed as a human being in general, even before.

Okay, looking at the comments I have come to realize why you thought he was being hard on Arthas. Fact is that everyone in the wc3 universe was incredibly stupid and never talked things out in a proper fashion, but there's more to it than just that.

Uther was never harsh on Arthas, Arthas had always been unreasonable and stupid.

Get your facts straight man.

Uther was being "harsh" (just told Arthas "Watch your tone with me, boy.") because Arthas was too full of himself and kept ignoring his orders. If Uther was wrong for not purging the town, so was Jaina, since she also refused to do it. Arthas did the wrong choice, and made the Scourge stronger.

Incidentally, for anyone still wondering if that's real latin:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum

@Kilgore Trout: He didn't just lose a fight, he also failed Kil'Jaden. And Illidan knew that Kil'Jaden isn't going to forgive him for the second time.

Cont. Add to this betrayal by Kealthas during his darkest hour, seeing his fellow highborn succumb to magic addiction would only serve to remind him of his own responsibility in it. Stress, pressure the threat impending doom and repeated failures drove a desperate creature mad.

@Kilgore Trout: You're missing a lot of the story there. Illidan went "insane" due to several factors: Losing the fight to Arthas, who was previously his equal (before he consumed the skull of Gul'Dan) and was still stronger than his demon self. And now, Kiljeaden was coming for him.

[url=#user_comment_358599]@Serialkillerwhale[/url]: It always seemed to me to be quite a stretch that "He went insane because he lost a fight." Illidan had lost fights before, after all. Quite recently, in fact.

[url=#user_comment_358599]@Serialkillerwhale[/url]: It always seemed to me like a big stetch that "He went insane because he lost a fight." It isn't the first time he lost a fight, after all. It isn't even the first time in that GAME he loses a fight, being defeated and captured first by Malfurion and then later by Maiev.

[url=#user_comment_358599]@Serialkillerwhale[/url]: It always seemed to me like a big stretch that "He went completely insane because he lost one fight." This wasn't the first time Illidan had lost, after all. Hell, earlier in the game you beat him while playing another character and THAT doesn't drive him insane.

@Myles Adams: Not quite. The two of them fought each other at the end of the campaign. Arthas won and seemed to kill Illidan with his sword. It turned out that Illidan had survived in WoW, but now his personality was completely different for some reason.

brought his narcissism down on his head and he couldn't accept that he lost, turning him cuckoo.

@Adams
Something sort of like that. Illidan was a power-hungry egomaniac with a tendency towards devil-dealing, but he was half-sane. Arthas putting him in his place and beating him despite his overwhelming advantage both in raw power and numbers cont.

Congratulations on passing 1500 Nerfs! Here's to 1500 more!

@Kilgore Trout: I thought WoW lore was basically that after The Frozen Throne expansion, Arthas broke Illidan, and turned him into the psychotic, completely evil monster to torment him.

The culling always bugged me. Why didn't Arthas explain the nature of the infection to Uther when he was questioned? Why didn't Uther ask? It's almost like the writers went against common sense to manufacture some drama, or something :P

Also, quarantining the soon to be zombies isn't a bad idea on its own, but when the undead army is literally waiting right outside the town border to scoop up these people, you can't really take chances.

Uther was a dick, but to be fair, he had no idea what was happening and didn't really trust Arthas' judgement enough. Understandable, since Arthas pretty much royally told him to fuck off.

Btw if anybody disagrees with me about Illidan, I've had an argument about him here before and don't particularly want another one. All I'll say is that there's a BIG difference between the Illidan in WC3 and the one in WoW. WC3 Illidan sometimes fights on the side of good. WoW Illidan never does.

@The J Man: It did not help that they took my favourite character, Illidan (whom I never saw as a COMPLETELY bad guy and whom I always thought could have been redeemed) and reduced him to a psychotic, completely evil monster so they could put him in the game as a raid boss.

@The J Man: I feel sorry for you as a lore nerd; I used to be one too, but after Blizzard kept on changing the lore (albeit justifying it once by releasing novels about how some people went back in time and changed history) I got to be like "Oh fuck this."

@Nerf NOW!!: I would have fought the ravenous zombies. Particularly when A) I don't recall them being too tough and B) Arthas could have watched everybody and attacked them the SECOND they began to turn, without them even having a chance to fight back.

[cont.]And who knows, maybe Jaina was right and they could have found another way that didn't involve killing anybody? We see later where Arthas' "victory at any cost" thinking gets him, so it's not good. And up until Mal'ganis showed, they had nothing to lose by waiting.

[cont.]As I recall (though it's been a very long time so I may have this wrong), the mission starts out with Arthas and his guys riding around and slaughtering every helpless, terrified civilian in town. At the very least, they were owed an explanation.[cont.]

It IS a no-win situation, but what I'd have done different would be to round up everybody in town and keep them imprisoned while trying to figure out another solution, right up until they began to turn and I had to kill them. [cont.]

From how I saw it, Uther was indignant because he didn't understand the situation as well as Arthas. Considering how this came right after Hearthglen where Arthas' army nearly lost against the undead, he couldn't risk a large city turning, they couldn't fight that.

I agree it was a mistake by Uther. But I think he couldn't avoid it, it was simply in his nature
I don't think it was Uther's judgement that sent Arthas to Northrend, but Arthas himself that lighted the spark of his downfall. In the end I think Arthas always did what he thought was best for his ppl

@Jo what Arthas did was WRONG. Just plain wrong. It was also the best call he could have made, but that doesn't make it less wrong. As you said, it was lose-lose.
With Uther being so goddamn perfect and oh so Light, of course he acted as a dick, blamed Arthas for everyting, and just abandoned him.

[url=#user_comment_358575]@blueriver[/url]: In the book, yes, but in the game Uther was a big dick. The game forces you to kill the people (or wait a sec for them to turn into a zombie) and somehow, it's your fault in the end.

[url=#user_comment_358576]@Chesthead[/url]: Zombie are a danger... if you don't kill them now they will kill more people later. I think Arthas took the practical (if cruel) decisions based on the information he had.

Christie Golden's book Arthas: Rise of the Lich King doesn't really paint Uther as being the spark of Arthas' downfall. In that book Uther is like the PERFECT paladin, the embodiment of the Light. I think Arthas falls because he can't be the king and pally he feels he must be, so he does stupid shit

The whole Straholme situation was a lose-lose situation, kill zombies or kill 'soon to be zombies'. Arthas went with the most... vile option, kill the people before they turned into zombies. Uther couldn't take the idea of a massacre from Arthas either way... so he left him alone, his only mistake.

[url=#user_comment_358568]@Eddmario[/url]: It's a "hearthstone / warcraft" kind of strip

Wow, wasn't expecting a Warcraft III strip.

Also, congrats on 1500!

@The J Man: well to be fair to uther, arthas was abusing his power as heir to the throne and dismissed uther

[url=#user_comment_358563]@CosmicKirby[/url], HUGE lore nerd here speaking, Uther is in part to blame, The people transformed into the undead only moments later after Uther left. He should have told arthas to quarantined and wait and see, but Uther Gave up so easily.

[url=#user_comment_358563]@CosmicKirby[/url]: If I recall, the people go into a ZZZZ mode and turn into zombies after some time. The way the game put it, you had to pick between killing defenseless people OR wait a bit and fighting ravenous zombies. Tough choice.

The problem is, MURDERING everyone didn't really help. It's not like they instantly turn or anything. Quarantining the city and NOT murdering everyone is something a paladin would do. Also, in WoW he kind of enjoys the act a bit too much.

So when you think about it Uther was to blame for every terrible thing that happened in the Warcraft Universe.

Thanks Uther, you're a hell of a paladin.

Ah, I played the equivalent event on WoW and Uther was the reasonable one xD. IF I remember correctly.