Of all the issues with Icecrown Citadel, the most irritating by far is that Mal’Ganis doesn’t make an appearance. How annoying is that? Especially after you did a whole quest chain in Icecrown which ended with him running off and warning you that, “You’ll never defeat the Lich King without my help!”
I guess he was just being a tosser. Or was he helping by … cheering from the sidelines, or washing his socks, or yelling “grats!” from the safety of his demonic sofa.
Hanging plot threads are very annoying.
Welcome to Spinksville! 
There must always be a Lich King.
The “Lich King” is not defeated, only Arthas. Maybe he was right.
To my mind, this is one on a long list of problems with the ultimate raid instance in the game at the moment. Given previous experience, expect him to show up sometime in Cataclysm to resolve that plot thread with no preamble or denouement.
(http://expostninja.wordpress.com/2010/02/21/the-lich-king-does-not-tell-stories/)
That’s a great post.
I just wondered: I do not know who does the story at Blizzard.
Do they have a game designer telling an author/writer “we need this & that” or who is responsible for what?
I can smell a disconnect between the quest makers and the story cinematics / lore of the game.
I can tell you the sort of thing that usually happens (in tabletop RPG development). There’s one manager/person in charge of ‘the lore’ who maintains some kind of handbook which writers are given as background. Certain NPCs will be off-limits to writers without specific checks, because a more senior writer has reserved them for a future plotline.
Plot meetings may herald any major changes in background or metastory, and updates to the lore book will be sent around as needed.
When things don’t work out, or a character/plot is needed for future work that wasn’t anticipated, or there’s a change of staff at the top, you get retcons.
But sometimes authors have some freedom to insert plothooks, and these aren’t always picked up on later. You probably don’t get the sort of frantic continuity checking in MMOs that you would in a film or a (well edited) series of books, for example.
In warcraft III, Mal’ganis was killed by Arthas with Frostmourne before he became the lich king himself. This didn’t happen long after the culling, so it was still before WoW’s timeline.
I agree they should have put a few quests in the game that explains that more clearly.
However, in Wrath he came back to (((spoiler warning))) lead the scarlet conquest guys and was vanquished by players.
I could have known the answer wasn’t that simple. I vaguely remember the quest there, but for some reason I remembered it as some flashback thing.
I can imagine he holds a grudge towards Arthas, but now that he’s dead, I figure there can’t be much more that he wants. A promotion due to elimination perhaps?
I know my comment is really late but I’ve been catching on my feed reader…
If I’m not mistaken, even when we had to ‘kill’ Mal’ganis on the island with the scarlet guys he became immune right before we actually got to kill him and ported away? I remember doing this quest for the first time and my whole group just sighed and asked if we would ever kill him.
Yup, you’re right. That’s the point where he says something like ‘you’ll never defeat the lich king without my forces’ and teleports away. Which is what I was whining about here, because it seems we do defeat the lich king without a hint of Mal’Ganis.
One thing to keep in mind about what characters say when it comes to their Dialogue:
It might not be true. Do not discount Hubris and Deception and a whole myriad of other factors into account for what is said and what is real. How many Cliche Villains have proclaimed “I AM INVINCIBLE!” before meeting their inevitable demise?
Just Because Mal’Ganis said “You’ll never defeat the Lich king without me!” Doesn’t make it true.
Nor does the disembodied Soul of King Terenas who said “Thier must always be a Lich King” make it true. There Was a Point in time where there was no Lich king. Is what he said true? Take nothing as granted, specially because a character in a story said it.
For some reason this post just earwormed me with “Should I stay or should I go?” — so I thought I’d share the love and see if I can’t infect anyone else. 😉
(Besides, it’s an opportunity to quote the Clash, and there can’t be enough of those. Ah, my vanished youth. Next I’ll be singing Chumbawumba.)
I agree with the first poster. The Lich King has not been defeated, he has just moved to a new host… and Mal’Ganis will play a role in the future in ultimately defeating him.
I still think the whole “There must always be a LK” plot line was actually a clever ploy by the Lich Kng himself to ensure its survival, when it saw the coming death of Arthas. Was that really Uther’s spirit that revealed it to us? Was that really Terenas in the end? Or were those spirits simply manipulated by the Lich King to ensure its continued survival in a new host?
After all, there is precedence for a host of Scourge falling away from the influence of the LK. They are now known as the Forsaken, and I don’t remember them going on a wild rampage killing everything in sight…