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A request? Please read the comic before forming an opinion on this. It is a cannon part of the lore, and ignoring it is ignoring a sizable chunk of Varian's story (MOST of his story, honestly). Yes, in game he comes off as hot-headed, but that's because in game, he's already lived through the events in the comic.After his return to Stormwind, Varian attempts peace talks with the Horde AGAIN (That's what he was on his way to do when he got kidnapped in the first place), and Garona, the same Orc (yes, half-orc, but her family tree is hardly relevant in this situation) who killed his father attempts to kill him. We find out more about what happened to her, but Varian does not. He is left thinking the Orcs staged this "peace talk" as a way to draw him out and kill him. How should he react after that? Even if the Orcs say "Oh, she wasn't working for us, she was under mind control", how can he trust that? The saying is "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on ME" - I know I'd have a hard time trusting someone who just tried to kill me at a "peace" meeting. To then have the Wrath Gate events play out, what other option is a leader to take? Some have said "The Horde isn't ALL ruled by Thrall, they're still mostly independant of each other" - while that's true, when you go to talk to Thrall (again, he allows for diplomacy, albeit guarded), Sylvanas is there, requesting (and receiving) aid from Thrall. So while he may not "rule the entire horde", he certainly hold sway and power. To say he couldn't do something about the Forsaken's actions is fallacy. He either WON'T take action, or he ENDORSES what they're doing. Please, read the comic. Read the new Arthas novel. Learn his backstory before judging his character. I'm judging Thrall after reading HIS backstory, and I still think he's grown spineless. Where is the warrior who rose up to free his people? If he truly cared about peace, he'd be doing some internal policing and making sure events like the Wrath Gate or the Broken Front didn't happen, or at least that the offenders were dealt with.Thrall seems to expect peace to fall into his lap. It won't happen that way, and he needs to wake up and realize it.
http://www.wowinsider.com/2009/04/26/varian-wrynn-is-right/"That's all I have to say about that" -Forrest Gump
I still believe that if you have to buy a whole lot of supplemental material to understand why a NPC is a ^&*!@#, it's been badly handled in game.
My take on this is that marketing has a hand in this project, for whatever reason, or that a marketing mentality has taken management in charge of storyline development in-game. Unfortunately, this is what happens when your MMO is owned and operated by a multi-billion dollar public company. It is about 'feelings,' not rational concepts. Varian good. Orc hurt varian bad. Varian mad. While some just reject this nonsense, the concepts DO fit with our basic emotional and situational judgment preconceptions.Edit - I will offer that the only notably logical thing I saw from Varian was in the undercity raid event, where he notes that all should look upon Putress' lab and the monstrosity that is the forsaken. After the plague effort, it seems clear the forsaken as a whole are a terrible threat to all living, not just alliance, and no rational ruler anywhere could fail to see it. The 'everything back to normal' aspect of the end of the questline is nonsense. Other horde leaders would be thinking 'how can we remove this piece from the board before they make another plague and kill us all?"
I always felt Varian's main purpose of being shoehorned into the story was to (badly) shift some emphasis back to the conflict between the alliance and the horde. Both sides had almost become BFFs of late, and apparently it took someone as bullishy aggressive as Varian and as terrible as the Wrath Gate to really get the hate wheels turning again.While I appreciate the attempt to give us a reason all the more reason to want to clobber the other faction, I thought the writing particularly around Varian and the Wrath Gate incident were clunky and ultimately groan worthy.Still, the Wrath Gate and the following battle for the undercity were and are Northrends crowning moment of awesome. In an expansion absolutely loaded with crowning moments of awesome.