Deathwing was an incredibly underrated villain

[Allenseiei]

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.

You are one of the definitions of not knowing his character. Deathwing's motivations are far from his will, he is a puppet corrupted by the old gods and twisted to do their bidding. By bringing azeroth's destruction he sets the old gods free to kill or corrupt the sleeping titan inside of the planet, which is the ultimate plan of the void lords that sent those old gods to azeroth.
If you even think a bit, in one of the caverns of time dungeons you can see the "End of Time", where it shows Deathwing's plans complete. There he lies as a tossed away tool in an empty husk, dead. He is a tool, nothing more, nothing less.
Deathwing's character deteriorated because the more he was controlled the more mindless he seemed.

Was the way they introduced his raid encounter good? People expected a nefarian-like fight, but we didnt get one, that's why people were disappointed. Well, its kind of hard to present a combat against a dragon stronger than all of the other aspects put together as something feasible for random joes. Truth in all, Deathwing is probably the strongest villan ever in world of warcraft history, except maybe archimonde and kil'jaeden, that we had the chance to fight. Measured against old gods is tricky, since I believe they are just hard to deal with instead of strong, but I can live with them also being stronger.

[Banard]

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.

no building story? Almost every leveling zone has a DW story...

example:

http://www.wowhead.com/quest=27715/t...eally-happened

[Ryethe]

Deathwing should have been great.

T11 had a great link to deathwing, twilight hammer+synestra and Nefarian.

T12 didn't really link to deathwing very well but did wrap up the hyjal story.

T13 was just a silly raid. Tons of RP, jokey bosses and an underwhelming last fight with deathwing where shamjesus killed him for us. Spine had some great visual like the roll but the gameplay did a bad job of showing it to you. Madness was just that fight where you did the easy part for like 8 minutes and got bored and then hoped everyone had enough attention to wrap up the boss in the parts that required a bit of attention.

If the deathwing fight had involved any of these things I would have been happy:
- fighting his human form
- fighting him like a dragon with all his massiveness on display
- us running for our lives as he died taking out the maelstrom islands (similar to the Wotlk 5man)

As it stood you fought some tendons and some claws and some chin. Just bad execution imo.

[Lime]

no building story? Almost every leveling zone has a DW story...

example:

http://www.wowhead.com/quest=27715/t...eally-happened

That was probably the worst example. IIRC, that quest was just a fluff piece that didn't touch on Deathwing's story, just a few accounts from insane individuals of how Deathwing arrived in the Badlands.

If I'm remembering it right, it certainly doesn't add to Deathwing's story.

That's not buildup, it's just fluff. The Wrathion egg questline would've been a great example, though.

[mysticx]

no building story? Almost every leveling zone has a DW story...

example:

http://www.wowhead.com/quest=27715/t...eally-happened

The problem was that Blizz put themselves (and the story) in an impossible position, Deathwing wrecked large parts of Azeroth by flying over it, no way that players could measure up to that, so the questing appearances amount to Deathwing showing up, hovering in the air a bit while ranting a bit, then flying away...

Then the Deathwing fight itself, first we pull metal plates off his back, and then we pummel his fingertips a bit until Thrall plotdevices him to death, a good villain is imposing enough to be threatening, but not too powerful to be reasonably killable, Deathwing failed in both IMO

[Polarthief]

He was underrated because his raid tier was the worst in the history of World of Warcraft. It was even worse than ToS which was the previous record holder as shittiest raid.

[Thoughtcrime]

He isn't underrated, he's quite adequately rated I think. He wasn't a character. He had no character. He was just a monster. That isn't interesting.

[ONCHEhap]

Great villain
Cool dragon
Good idea
Terribad implementation and portrayal

They wasted so much potential

[Gemini Soul]

Look at WoTLK, when we leveled and in Naxx/ToC he was showing up taunting us. This made him a real villain because his presence was around, known, and threatening. We never had that with DW and it made him less threatening of end of Xpac villain that was built around him.

[Faroth]

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.

Particularly disappointing that they wrote him down the path of madness so he was just a rage monster. Yeah, he's always been a bit crazy since he was introduced, that's why he went from Neltharion to Deathwing in the first place, but the Deathwing we got in Cataclysm had none of the master manipulator aspects he should have had.

[Kokolums]

The deathwing fight should have been the onyxia fight on steroids.

[Deleted]

Look at WoTLK, when we leveled and in Naxx/ToC he was showing up taunting us. This made him a real villain because his presence was around, known, and threatening. We never had that with DW and it made him less threatening of end of Xpac villain that was built around him.

The Lich King was ridiculously Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain

[Deleted]

I think almost everyone agrees that the expansion didn't give what deathwing earned. It could've been pure madness full of destruction and an almost impossible fight to the death.

Sadly enough I feel like we've been like: we've pissed on DW to show dominance! I mean he was like the aspect of earth....c'mon! When he emerged into azeroth after his slumber and repair the world trembled and whole areas changed!

I gotta be honest that the dragon aspect lore is one of my faves in Warcraft. So my hopes were really high. But it got roflstomped in cataclysm. WotLK was pure awesomeness.

I wish that Cataclysm was too...But no....just no. I'm having fun in legion tho. But I'm just playing extremely casual now due to life and all.

[Deleted]

I mean he even went "Just as planned!" on us in his encounter.

Exactly he was cringe

[Deleted]

I found Deathwing to be incredibly boring in Cataclysm, he just felt like a loud obnoxious dragon who wouldn't shut up. I read the lore books in MoP/WoD when they released Warcrimes and found Deathwing to be far more interesting there. So really, the character itself had great potential but Blizzard failed to properly introduce him within the game.

Perhaps if they had made numerous quests where we see some of his back-story, things he's done, accomplishments, goals and defeats, perhaps then people wouldn't have disliked him so much.

The boss fight didn't help in Dragon Soul though, I get what Blizzard was aiming for but it didn't work out at all.

[MoanaLisa]

Deathwing is underrated because Blizzard in their desire to convince everyone that bigger is more epic and badder completely screwed up the optics. It was all just tragically mishandled and lame. The raid was even worse in terms of pure optics. It looked stupid and was laughable.

In the end he was simply portrayed as some dumb kaiju monster. Ugh.

[Deleted]

Look at WoTLK, when we leveled and in Naxx/ToC he was showing up taunting us. This made him a real villain because his presence was around, known, and threatening. We never had that with DW and it made him less threatening of end of Xpac villain that was built around him.

Threatening? It got old rather quickly. I wonder if anyone's counted how many times he states something along the lines of: "I will let you live, this time...", might have been cool the first time, but not when he keeps repeating it over and over.

My biggest disappointment with Wrath (lore-wise at least) is that Mal'Ganis didn't take part in some form in Icecrown Citadel. He showed up in the Icecrown quest-lines indicating that he was attempting to get revenge on Arthas/the Lich King, but he never did.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

He wasn't underrated, he was underwhelming. They simply didn't handle him properly.

Also he had to follow up Arthas, the Lich King. Anything and anyone was going to fall short.

[Banard]

The Lich King was ridiculously Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain

so is all of warcraft....but that is the genre...and why most of us like it.

[Deleted]

so is all of warcraft....but that is the genre...and why most of us like it.

The genre is Saturday Morning Cartoon?