Since the anniversary version of TBC is just about ready to let us raid the Black Temple, now's as good time as any to bring up my ancient gripe with this expansion. No, it's not how its dungeons are so uninventively linear compared to Vanilla or how flying mounts ruin the game. It's about the story direction Blizzard took with TBC.
Illidan is arguably the main hero of Warcraft 3. He's obsessed with gaining power, but for good reason - there are demons to hunt. So even in ROC, he's the one to drive the Legion back from Felwood and force Archimonde's hand with the attack on Hyjal. And what does he get for that? He gets banished because he's got horns now. So what? Malfurion has horns too, and no one seems to mind.
But then in TFT, he becomes an even more prominent force. He's the main opponent of Arthas the Lich King. He single-handedly tries to save Azeroth, while everyone hates him for that. And then at the end, he says screw it, peaces out to Outland, and takes it over from the Legion to fortify it against its return. As he goes about it, he saves the blood elves from getting sacrificed and executed for no reason, frees those funky-looking draenei, and is generally a cool dude.
Fast forward to TBC. Illidan is now a mustache-twirling villain. He enslaved everyone. Demons are all over the place. Kaelthas is Kiljaeden's lapdog. And Lady Vashj, well she's a naga, she supposed to be shifty, so no complaints there. They even got Akama split in two so that you get to fight him in the Black Temple. This never made any sense to me. The pivot came out of nowhere, was in no way warranted or foreshadowed.
And to prove this isn't just my interpretation, after pulling a, "somehow Illidan returned" in Legion, they have him acting the way he was supposed to all along - power hungry and arrogant, but with good intentions. He becomes the main hero of that expansion, defeats the Legion after all in an anime battle in space, and sends a love letter to Tyrande. So even Blizzard knew they messed up with TBC and wanted to restore Illidan's arc.
Is anyone else as annoyed by the way they treat Illidan and his crew in TBC? Was there ever an official explanation for the totally random heel turn? I remember when TBC was just coming out, the internet wasn't as big or loud as it is today, so all the complaints were muted. Most people either didn't know the lore or didn't care, they just wanted to go You Are Not Prepared over and over again.
This just proves that a cool cinematic and a voice line can create a memorable villain people still talk about all these years later, even if they didn't already know who Illidan was when playing TBC back in the day. For all the non-Warcraft 3 WoW players, these characters were fresh and new so they just went along with it. Also creates a funny contrast with the Jailer. Who's also remembered, if for entirely different reasons.
And thanks to TBC we got a bunch of memes, like YOU ARE NOT PREPARED and all the talk of Kael's setbacks. And funny enough, this even had an effect on the current AI slop plague, where Kael is for some reason the favorite fantasy name for just about every slop machine out there. With Voss being the leading last name, which is also a WoW original. Guess it goes to show just how pervasive WoW is for the culture at large.
Having skipped Warcraft 3, I only knew of Illidan from TBC. It seems to me like they kind of reduced him to style rather than substance so players could be excited about getting his blindfold and warglaives for themselves. The RTS games are about the heroes, where WoW is about the player getting to be the hero. But yeah, it does seem like they lost the thread there. It took me a while to understand why the character was a big deal and not just another edgelord icon like Sephiroth from FF7.
It's definitely worth revisiting. These days the reforged version goes on sale reasonably frequently. And it has the toggle to have the classic graphics/campaign in the options. The reforged changes are so minor and rarely for the better, so it's best to experience the original version.
Although, since it's blizzard and the progress doesn't carry over between the version - you might want to first do the intro Orc campaign in Reforged before switching to Classic and starting anew. The Reforged version includes a couple of extra missions connecting the intro to the later Orc campaign that were cut in the original release. They were later introduced as a custom minicampaign, but the classic reforged version doesn't have them. So if you want to know how the darkspear trolls join the horde, reforged is the place to go.
