This post was edited on August 10, 2014, for better spacing and ease of reading.
The Protoss, in the course of the first StarCraft, are shown to be powerful, and at least some were willing to act. Tassadar did not hesitate to throw his orders away rather than sterilize Tarsonis and wipe out countless Terran lives. Later, he worked with Zeratul and the Dark Templar and took down the Overmind.
In the Brood War, the Protoss did flee from Aiur, but they then did their best to ensure the safety of Shakuras. Rather than simply stalling the Zerg until they were overrun, they took the initiative and searched for the means they needed to destroy the infestation. Afterwards, when Kerrigan betrayed the Protoss and killed Fenix, the survivors were not afraid to take action against Kerrigan. They were defeated, admittedly, but they had taken decisive action, and the defeat was not total.
Now, move forward to Wings of Liberty. The Protoss are almost nonexistent as a presence. There are the random Tal’Darim factions on some planets, but they have no ties with the Protoss of the first StarCraft. Zeratul makes a brief appearance to hand Raynor a memory crystal, but he does not play a significant role.
The Protoss of Shakuras at large, however, are seen exactly once in the course of the campaign, which is when they appear at Haven to cleanse a newly founded Terran colony of a Zerg infestation. Depending on the course taken, they either do nothing at all or else are spectacularly crippled by Raynor’s Raiders and forced to retreat. At only one point is any action against Kerrigan seen: in the first of four flashback missions in Zeratul’s memory crystal, Karass is seen with a small group of Protoss clearly sent to watch Kerrigan. They are quickly slaughtered, however, to buy Zeratul the chance to escape with the knowledge of a Xel’Naga prophecy.
At no point in Wings of Liberty do the Protoss attempt to kill Kerrigan, the single greatest threat to their race that they know of. When she is on Ulaan, being actively monitored by a handful of Protoss, no fleet appears to trap her. When she sends out the Swarm to terrorize Dominion space and search for the artifact pieces, leaving Char relatively lightly defended and possible to assault, the Protoss still make no sign.
Even when Raynor makes an appearance and apparently catches Kerrigan off balance, leaving her wide open for a pincer strike, there is still no reaction from the Protoss. One might be able to claim ignorance, but this would force the player to assume that the Protoss suffer from a severe level of military stupidity. There is no viable reason why the Protoss could not or would not send a few Observers to monitor Char at a safe distance, and it is outright absurd to believe that they were utterly ignorant of the Dominion’s struggles against the majority of the Swarm. Timidity is a slightly better excuse, but it still makes for a jarring contrast with the bold Protoss warriors of the original StarCraft and the Brood War.
In Flashpoint, the Protoss make no appearance at all. To be fair, this would be unrealistic to expect in light of Wings of Liberty; if they had not appeared at Char before Kerrigan’s deinfestation, it would be difficult for them to catch up within the course of the book.
At the end, however, Kerrigan is locked away in an Umojan lab for an indeterminate amount of time before the Dominion fleet arrives and forces her to flee. That timeframe would have been a window for the Protoss to wipe her out, as it seems that Arcturus Mengsk had no trouble finding her. Given that the Protoss are known to be capable of psionic tracking, and according to the books are also capable of detecting massive spikes of psionic power over interstellar distances, it is reasonable to assume that they can do the same as Arcturus and send an extermination fleet. This does not occur, although the confines of the recent story would have made it difficult for such an appearance to happen.
Unfortunately, things only get worse when Heart of the Swarm opens. After Kerrigan escapes, she starts to collect the scattered Zerg and reform them into the Swarm. Logically, this would take several weeks at the least simply to travel to the various planets. During this time, especially before Zerus, she would have been a huge target for a Protoss fleet, like the Golden Armada mentioned within the game. Kerrigan would have lacked the power to fight off the Golden Armada, as she had no more than one or two broods in her service. On Kaldir, the chief reason for her attempts to silence any Protoss warnings was because of her fear of the Golden Armada.
However, there seems to be a serious double standard presented here. On the one hand, the Protoss would apparently attack Kerrigan if she exterminated a small research outpost that got a warning off before perishing, but would not touch her in spite of the countless Protoss deaths she caused in the Brood War if she was vulnerable at any other time. It has already been explained in the previous posts why the warning should have gotten out regardless of how quickly Kerrigan moved, but that is not even the greatest problem here. The Protoss, once again, failed to act when the opportunity was open, such as when she was retaking Char. If she had been trapped on the planet between Warfield’s forces and a Protoss fleet in orbit, she would have been eliminated very quickly.
It should be noted that all of these possibilities were outright ignored with a Blizzard comment about a brewing civil war on Shakuras being the reason for total immobility. Apart from the fact that not even one reference to this exists within the game, such troubles should not have stopped the Protoss from uniting against their greatest enemy. This is even contradicted by some of the short stories released by Blizzard, which indicate that the Aiur and Shakuras Protoss are cooperating reasonably well, with no signs of a schism forming.
According to the story Blizzard has told with StarCraft II, the Protoss are effectively incapable of decisive action, or are too weak to do so. They also apparently lack the intelligence to conduct basic and consistent surveillance of their primary opponent, as spying is a crucial facet of any war, and the Protoss had the means to do such at next to no cost to themselves. Perhaps Legacy of the Void will amend these shortfalls, but right now they constitute a glaring hole in the story.
Starcraft 2's Troubles 