Deathwing was an incredibly underrated villain

[Deleted]

When cata came out, everyone was "booo: we got these badass dudes in Illidan, then Arthas, then a dragon?? bhooo"
This thing went on a bit, and while i would never say that Deathwing as a character has more charisma then these other 2, i would say he is just behind.

First of all he has many accomplishments that simply other villains didn't match.
The fact that he literally changed the landscape of the world was incredible, and while you may or may not like the world post-cataclysm to me it was at least already an impressive mark left from the villain to the players.

Second, he was acutally THERE WITH US.
Unlike most other villains that appears sporadically during the expansion and you mostly see them only in their raid, with deathwing it was different:
He was literally free roaming all over Azeroth.

I still remember that i was shitting in my pants when i was in the fking Barrens and everything turned red, the sky, the grass all red. Then you start see Flames around you: You turn up your camera to the sky and you see big ass Dragon flying over the zone - killing you in the process (but earning a nice achivement that sadly Blizz gave for free later).

This is all to say that we need to see more VIllains like him. Leaving a real impact on the world, the players, the characters.

Deathwing you were my hero.

[Puri]

Well, scratching has back and then tickling his toes for sure removed quite a bit of the evil magic.

[Deathquoi]

I don't think people were underwhelmed by Deathwing, I think there were some people who didn't play any of the Warcraft games before WoW and didn't know the lore who didn't know who Deathwing was, and there were some people who thought his treatment in Cata was a bit cartoony.

[Jimson]

When cata came out, everyone was "booo: we got these badass dudes in Illidan, then Arthas, then a dragon?? bhooo"
This thing went on a bit, and while i would never say that Deathwing as a character has more charisma then these other 2, i would say he is just behind.

First of all he has many accomplishments that simply other villains didn't match.
The fact that he literally changed the landscape of the world was incredible, and while you may or may not like the world post-cataclysm to me it was at least already an impressive mark left from the villain to the players.

Second, he was acutally THERE WITH US.
Unlike most other villains that appears sporadically during the expansion and you mostly see them only in their raid, with deathwing it was different:
He was literally free roaming all over Azeroth.

I still remember that i was shitting in my pants when i was in the fking Barrens and everything turned red, the sky, the grass all red. Then you start see Flames around you: You turn up your camera to the sky and you see big ass Dragon flying over the zone - killing you in the process (but earning a nice achivement that sadly Blizz gave for free later).

This is all to say that we need to see more VIllains like him. Leaving a real impact on the world, the players, the characters.

Deathwing you were my hero.

Ironically, we "saw" more of DW in the world than we did in either of the 2 raid encounters.

[McNeil]

Deathwing had great potential to be an amazing villain, but Cataclysm did a poor job portraying him. And his ending was very unsatisfying where he basically did nothing but attack random targets around Wyrmrest Temple, flee when Ultraxion gets defeated and then continues getting his ass beaten till he explodes into confetti. He has great power yet he never used them efficiently. There's also no real story building up for him unlike Arthas from previous expansion. Cataclysm as a whole was just bad and sadly Deathwing became a victim of bad writing.

[Deleted]

I found Deathwing far more interesting than Darth Vader Arthas and Edgelord Illidan

[Stormspellz]

Deathwing is an awesome villain, wow's deathwing...not so much.

[zoefschildpad]

The problem I have with Deathwing is that his plans just don't seem to make any sense. He's flying around the world setting things on fire to... I don't know. Is he exterminating all life on Azeroth in order to die of starvation? It just doesn't make any sense to me.

Warcraft villains rarely have interesting motivations, but Deathwing was the worst. "I destroy everything because I'm evil!" is just bad writing.

[A dot Ham]

When cata came out, everyone was "booo: we got these badass dudes in Illidan, then Arthas, then a dragon?? bhooo"
This thing went on a bit, and while i would never say that Deathwing as a character has more charisma then these other 2, i would say he is just behind.

First of all he has many accomplishments that simply other villains didn't match.
The fact that he literally changed the landscape of the world was incredible, and while you may or may not like the world post-cataclysm to me it was at least already an impressive mark left from the villain to the players.

Second, he was acutally THERE WITH US.
Unlike most other villains that appears sporadically during the expansion and you mostly see them only in their raid, with deathwing it was different:
He was literally free roaming all over Azeroth.

I still remember that i was shitting in my pants when i was in the fking Barrens and everything turned red, the sky, the grass all red. Then you start see Flames around you: You turn up your camera to the sky and you see big ass Dragon flying over the zone - killing you in the process (but earning a nice achivement that sadly Blizz gave for free later).

This is all to say that we need to see more VIllains like him. Leaving a real impact on the world, the players, the characters.

Deathwing you were my hero.

Well I think you're right about deathwing, you're wrong about the zones.

I would say that to this day I have only seen about 50% of the changes to the old zones and the subsequent quests.

I agree that is very important to keep the villain at the forefront of the players mind and experiences throughout all experiences of the xpac in order for the play to feel "threatened".

[StationaryHawk]

I liked Deathwing's presence in Cataclysm, but his character change from cunning villain to raving madman is what wasn't received well.

The problem I have with Deathwing is that his plans just don't seem to make any sense. He's flying around the world setting things on fire to... I don't know. Is he exterminating all life on Azeroth in order to die of starvation? It just doesn't make any sense to me.

Warcraft villains rarely have interesting motivations, but Deathwing was the worst. "I destroy everything because I'm evil!" is just bad writing.

Deathwing states his goal in just about every piece of dialogue he has. Of all the poor writing in Cataclysm, confusion over what he's up to shouldn't be the problem.

[McFuu]

I'd say he was a bad villain. For 2 main reasons:

He was entirely too powerful: Which means that while he did change the "world" he did nothing after that. Why didn't he just destroy SW or Org? He damaged the park... He could have done a million other things, but didn't. Caused an Earthquake, damaged some areas that we haven't visited since lvl 25 in Vanilla, that's it. He could have reset the world, what would the legion be able to do to stop him, or Panda land? He was turned into a boring boss because in Lore he far exceeded any of our or other NPC's ability to kill. Anything he did or didn't do was a let down.

Second reason,
He was entirely too powerful: Which means it required a Deus Ex to kill him, and really our involvement was pointless. The Dragon Soul was required to kill Deathwing. Now I know this is sort of true for most bosses. But most bosses are within realm for the player character to fight in large groups. The Deathwing fight is a huge stretch.

This makes him not very compelling.

Also his motivations and back story is so far removed from current times in WoW that you don't care about killing him. Fighting the LK is huge, you controlled him in WC3, you knew why he changed, you might have agreed with him to a point. Illidan is very similar in that regard. Garrosh was hard for some people, he was the leader, and in someways what people wanted out of a Warchief.

Deathwing was just this dragon, tearing everything up because he was grumpy. Any motivation he had was completely buried in madness, any reason you could want to kill him was just told to us. He was a non-issue up until the Cata cinematic, and now we were supposed to care he was the big bad for the expansion.

Terrible boss, terrible expansion, etc...

[draynay]

Deathwing in cata was a very flat character, saying he had a "story" would be overly generous. He was the least interesting member of the black dragonflight to appear in WoW.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I'd say he was a bad villain. For 2 main reasons:

He was entirely too powerful: Which means that while he did change the "world" he did nothing after that. Why didn't he just destroy SW or Org? He damaged the park... He could have done a million other things, but didn't. Caused an Earthquake, damaged some areas that we haven't visited since lvl 25 in Vanilla, that's it. He could have reset the world, what would the legion be able to do to stop him, or Panda land? He was turned into a boring boss because in Lore he far exceeded any of our or other NPC's ability to kill. Anything he did or didn't do was a let down.

Second reason,
He was entirely too powerful: Which means it required a Deus Ex to kill him, and really our involvement was pointless. The Dragon Soul was required to kill Deathwing. Now I know this is sort of true for most bosses. But most bosses are within realm for the player character to fight in large groups. The Deathwing fight is a huge stretch.

This makes him not very compelling.

Also his motivations and back story is so far removed from current times in WoW that you don't care about killing him. Fighting the LK is huge, you controlled him in WC3, you knew why he changed, you might have agreed with him to a point. Illidan is very similar in that regard. Garrosh was hard for some people, he was the leader, and in someways what people wanted out of a Warchief.

Deathwing was just this dragon, tearing everything up because he was grumpy. Any motivation he had was completely buried in madness, any reason you could want to kill him was just told to us. He was a non-issue up until the Cata cinematic, and now we were supposed to care he was the big bad for the expansion.

Terrible boss, terrible expansion, etc...

Being too powerful doesn't make a bad villain. Him destroying the cities wasn't really realistic in WoW and anyone expecting it were fooling themselves.

[Sovich]

WoW has the most lazy and boring writing of any video game I played. Cataclysm is the biggest example of this. How they treated LK and Deathwing as losers that had no way of winning from the start does not stir any sort of excitement

[Queen of Hamsters]

He wasn't underrated, he was underpresented by the developers.

They could've given him more presence, made him more dangerous and ferocious. Sadly, they opted to create a static world where Deathwing would sometimes do a fly-over attack.

And how we fought him in Dragon Soul, was a disgrace. WHY would he have allowed us to stand around on the tower and coming up with plans?

[McFuu]

Being too powerful doesn't make a bad villain. Him destroying the cities wasn't really realistic in WoW and anyone expecting it were fooling themselves.

Why isn't it realistic? The story could easily allow for SW getting destroyed, a new royal family, etc... etc...

He was entirely too powerful to write in a way that makes his inclusion in WoW worthwhile. The worst part is he didn't need to be written into the story at that point. WoW could have went straight to Panda (I guess), or WOD, or the Emerald Nightmare, or a million other already existing story lines that seemingly get ignored. Instead we get Cata, after LK for no reason other than someone woke up from nap time.

[Deleted]

Why isn't it realistic? The story could easily allow for SW getting destroyed, a new royal family, etc... etc...

He was entirely too powerful to write in a way that makes his inclusion in WoW worthwhile. The worst part is he didn't need to be written into the story at that point. WoW could have went straight to Panda (I guess), or WOD, or the Emerald Nightmare, or a million other already existing story lines that seemingly get ignored. Instead we get Cata, after LK for no reason other than someone woke up from nap time.

Well MoP only happened because of Cataclysm disrupting the Mists and Garrosh wouldn't have become Warchief if Thrall wasn't needed for Deathwing

[Triggered Fridgekin]

As far as a boss is concerned, I can see why they went the direction they chose for the Deathwing encounter. Here's this towering behemoth which is held together by plates of Adamantium so we're going to do our take on Shadow of the Collosus since it's the only way we can undermine his defenses since he's probably not dumb enough to use his human form.

And then everything about Dragon Soul happened.

[Archmage Arugal]

Deathwing's biggest failing wasn't even something that was his fault, it was Blizzard's. He got caught in the middle of the conflict between Lore/Story and Game Mechanics.

From the Lore side of things, we first see him in the cinematic where the world of Azeroth is shaking and already starting to break, just from the pain he's in. Then he emerges and the whole landscape just changes. They built him up in the first moments to have this incredible power that, really, we should not have been capable of fighting.

Then Game Mechanics kick in. It's an RPG, yes, but it's more an MMO than anything, so you can't have really change the landscape too much. You can't have this incredibly powerful dragon who can shatter and break the world actually destroy cities, level zones, or just wipe entire chunks of continent off the map. So he gets nerfed. Instead, now he just flies around to some zones and kills anything with a health bar, and then flies away. That's it, that's all. Couple of minutes later, everything has respawned and now it's like he was never there.

Lore/Story wanted us to have Unicron, Gameplay gave us Starscream instead.

[McFuu]

Well MoP only happened because of Cataclysm disrupting the Mists and Garrosh wouldn't have become Warchief if Thrall wasn't needed for Deathwing

I'm aware of that, but that can be written in other ways. They don't have to occur that way, and other than DW being the spark for these events, there is no other relation to DW afterwards.

Other than the major issues of Pandaland being, rather stupid, flight had developed, both factions were becoming rather explorative, Pandaland would have been discovered eventually. Garrosh was groomed to be warchief by Thrall for the most part. And he had established himself as a leader in Northrend, none of this has to do with DW and other than Thrall wanting to go off and play earth mage, there is no specific reason DW even needs to be a deciding factor in Thrall leaving the Horde. Lets not forget he had been leading for a very long time and was growing tired of the fight already.