Why Was The Scourge So Effective? - WoW Lore

Hello, guys, this is Doronsmovies and today I will be talking about the Scourge and why it was such a strong and powerful force. Briefly discussing their creation and then talking about the tactics they used to conquer a large part of Azeroth. So without further ado, let's get into the lore! Arguably Scourge is one of the most successful armies and one of the biggest threats to the world in recent times.

For the few years they were active they caused a lot of mayhem, took over an entire continent, destroyed half of another one and it took the combined effort of all the major organized forces of Azeroth to defeat them. So exactly why was the Scourge so successful? We all know the undead army was created to soften up Azeroth's defences for the upcoming Burning Legion invasion.

As the orcs had previously failed, Kil'Jaeden had another plan. He captured the orc shaman Ner'Zhul, placed him atop the Frozen Throne and gave him powers over the undead. He didn't really start with much but over a short period, he expanded immensely.

Even 10 thousand years ago the Legion had experimented with undeath, however, as far as we know it was only recently that they decided to put it into action and to use the undead as the go to plan for the new invasion. As the Lich King had established himself, there was no army outside of his very limited dark powers.

As he was situated in Northrend though there was no centralized power and he began taking over the indigenous people and to form the core of his forces. Ner'zhul was insanely effective as he was able to corrupt minds and by raising the living he rapidly grew his army.

The Lich King was resourceful though, some he just slew and raised, however some he just manipulated such as the vrykul. He ran into his first major obstacle with the nerubians as they were immune to the plague of undeath and his telepathic powers, and their advanced technology and armies proved quite the difficulty for him.

However, he figured out that he could resurrect them after slaying them on the battlefield and therefore utilized his growing army to swarm the nerubians and to almost entirely turn them into his servants. The second large enemy was the Drakkari troll empire which did put up a fight for years but wasn't that much of a hassle for the Dark lord.

Soon enough Ner'Zhul had control over the majority of the continent, he was much more powerful and a large part of the conquered technology was incorporated and there are a few reasons for the success He was supported by the nathrezim and their superior intellect and experience, he had the plague and his necromantic powers which proved super effective discounting the nerubians and lastly, a big factor was that Northrend was sort of an isolated wasteland.

There was no united force like there is today and very few people ever went to Northrend or even knew what was happening there - which were perfect conditions for Ner'zhul to build up his forces. Now as he had his base of operations his next goal was to destroy the main resistance force of Azeroth - the human kingdoms, to take up their powerful artifacts and to summon the Burning Legion.

These guys repelled the previous demon attempt so a new plan was considered, a much more covert one. Him invading with ships against the powerful human navies would be a suicide mission, therefore, Ner'Zhul decided to call upon those seeking power, most notably one of the strongest mages at the time Kel'Thuzad and offered him a deal.

Looking at it now Kel'Thuzad was instrumental in the fall of Lordaeron and the other kingdoms and without him, the Scourge wouldn't be nearly as successful. He formed the Cult of the Damned essentially a religion and for the next 3 years went on to spread it amongst the human population, targeting the downtrodden - offering them riches and superior society.

At the same time, he used his influence and money to bribe influential people and with his fanatics by the time the war began he controlled quite a few key areas. Now with all in order, he began spreading the plague across the unsuspecting farmlands and cities and everything worked like a charm.

Soon citizens began turning into the undead it was almost impossible to stop it. Lordaeron organized a defence but every time they would clear one area, 2 new were created. What made it even worse is that each time a soldier fell he could potentially be resurrected and even the graveyards could be used.

After the death of Kel'Thuzad, the dreadlord Mal'ganis had manipulated Arthas that in turn divided the defence force and ultimately the prince fell becoming the biggest enemy of his kingdom. In the end, Arthas returned as a death knight, killed the King which sealed the coffin of Lordaeron.

Now with the rampant undead, the army was completely disorganized, the king was dead, most civilians were slain and the undead army grew immense. Furthermore, Quel'thalas was destroyed, almost the entire population was slain and the majority resurrected and everything just snowballed from there.

Now the Scourge was a massive army and with so many additions and recent sources of power they created even more monstrosities and weapons at the time of the Wrath of the Lich King really becoming the strongest force on Azeroth that took the combined Horde and Alliance effort to defeat, but not even fully as they remain up to this day.

So by now you can probably see why they were so effective. The Scourge wasn't particularly strong but they sneaked their way in and blew everything up from the inside, destroying their enemies and significantly growing their army. There were 2 main factors for this.

First, as I mentioned, the fact that the dreadlords played a major role. These guys are some of the smartest beings in the universe, experts in deception that had thousands of years of experience creating wars and destroying entire worlds, so Azeroth was just a regular day for them.

Secondly just the nature of undeath. When you can resurrect your enemy and turn him into a servant you can very easily create a snowball effect. After they had used deception and placed the plague in strategic positions they suddenly had a large force at their disposal and the army had no idea who they were fighting, who was the enemy and who wasn't and they were shortly dismantled.

A completely different strategy when compared to the previous orcish invasion. So while the Scourge was at its peak insanely powerful as a regular army what made them so powerful and effective was strategy, intellect and deception. Thank you for watching.