Why Kil'Jaeden is treated like a fool in this expansion?

[Golden Yak]

I see that most people on this post dont really understand the character. Kil'Jaeden was NEVER the all mighty evil that Archimonde was.
While Archie killed this underlings with no remorse for failure, Kil always was the guy that even though punished offered seconds choices.

In the end he was just a misguided soul that felt " betrayed " by his best friend... a friend he always looked up to and envied. A friend that wouldnt even hear is pleas about the Legion and how doomed they were if they didnt accept the " gift ". In the end he just felt betrayed... even if he knew deep down he was wrong, he was just a coward that choose life over being killed... and you could really feel that even though he acted evil and all mighty he always felt like he was putting on a show. Like on the patch cinematic where you could really see him being hurt by Velen calling him a monster.

In the end, like it or not, Kil'jaeden was someone that was broken. Delighted on inflicting pain into others as if that would justify his choise of dooming his people to " save" them.

The final touch of Velen, that silent " i forgive you brother " was all that he wanted in these 10.000's of years. Even if he never admit it. Why else chase the Draenei all over the stars while Archiemonde just didnt give a crap?

Like it or not this was the true character of Kil'Jaeden. And it was masterfully portrayed. The deceiver was deceiving himself in the end.

And apparently deceived us all.

I was halfway through reading this post and I was like 'he's gonna make some smart-ass remark about the Deceiver deceiving himself.' BAM. He did it. Boooo.

Gawd, you're right though.

[MatadorMedia]

Yeah, it was really dumb not to involve him more in the Broken Shore. He should have had a Lich King style ever-presence. Arthas was and will forever be WoW's best presented villain.

[Destinas]

My only issue is that the Deceiver needed to do a little more deceiving. I was holding out hope that he was masquerading as Xe'ra to screw us over with some over-elaborate gambit or some such, but I guess not. I don't know, it just felt like he should've had a proper game plan to subvert and conquer Azeroth. That was his thing, his modus operandi, the key difference between him and Archimonde. The Legion did engage in some subterfuge in the class campaigns, but it was never KJ directly, only one dreadlord or another.

I mean, look at his cameo in the demon hunter campaign. He just shows up on your spaceship and says "Hey retards, join the Legion or I'll murder you." That one threat was this genius' master plan to take out the Illidari. Where was the steady corruption, the mind games, the sweet lies, the ultimate temptation? Some of the artifact lore hints at this kind of thing (like how he turned Varedis), but it didn't carry over in-game at all.

The most subterfuge we see him display is helping out Akaari Shadowgore in the Fangs of the Devourer acquisition. Even then, he's just empowering her, and she simply obeys Kil'jaeden's wishes. Unfortunately, as you said, the majority of classes don't get to see the "Deceiver" side of him.

Personally, I wish he had more to do with Death Knights and Warlocks in their campaigns, especially because a lot of what they do (or even the reason DKs exist) is thanks to KJ himself. Even the Scepter of Sargeras belonged to Ner'zhul, who answered to KJ once - yet he isn't involved in that when it comes to Legion. I haven't lost all hope of lore in this expansion, but it seems clear to me that the Tomb of Sargeras wasn't originally intended to be KJ's finale - especially since Thal'dranath was meant to be 7.2 content well into the alpha/beta.

[Grimbold21]

What i wanna know is why was his size drastically reduced

[Adoxe]

Kil'jaeden has always doubted Sargeras and the Legion. He even tried to overthrow Sargeras multiple times, the ending makes perfect sense. He was the usual old KJ all the way up until he was beaten and dying on the floor, and when he was beaten and realized that his war is over, he let some things off of his chest before he died.

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What i wanna know is why was his size drastically reduced

Archimonde and Kil'jaeden can change their size at will. It's one of their powers. Archimonde, being the show off and more of a "in your face" kind of guy, would show his dominance by being huge and towering over everything. Kil'jaeden, however, is more about magic and tactical planning, so he didn't need to appear threatening most of the time, but when he had to do it he did - Sunwell, Outland when telling Illidan to destroy Lich King, Gul'dan's vision, Ner'zhul's capture, etc.

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I see that most people on this post dont really understand the character. Kil'Jaeden was NEVER the all mighty evil that Archimonde was.
While Archie killed this underlings with no remorse for failure, Kil always was the guy that even though punished offered seconds choices.

In the end he was just a misguided soul that felt " betrayed " by his best friend... a friend he always looked up to and envied. A friend that wouldnt even hear is pleas about the Legion and how doomed they were if they didnt accept the " gift ". In the end he just felt betrayed... even if he knew deep down he was wrong, he was just a coward that choose life over being killed... and you could really feel that even though he acted evil and all mighty he always felt like he was putting on a show. Like on the patch cinematic where you could really see him being hurt by Velen calling him a monster.

In the end, like it or not, Kil'jaeden was someone that was broken. Delighted on inflicting pain into others as if that would justify his choise of dooming his people to " save" them.

The final touch of Velen, that silent " i forgive you brother " was all that he wanted in these 10.000's of years. Even if he never admit it. Why else chase the Draenei all over the stars while Archiemonde just didnt give a crap?

Like it or not this was the true character of Kil'Jaeden. And it was masterfully portrayed. The deceiver was deceiving himself in the end.

And apparently deceived us all.

That's honestly the best post about this that I've seen. Good job.

[Hctaz]

Yes, my problem is not what he is saying to velen, but the way the whole things goes. I'm pretty sure you (if you raided back then) know how you felt when you defeated the lich king in Wotlk, considering Kil'Jaeden one of the greater characters jsut as Arthas, the whole raid and the ending feel underwhelming to me.

And as i said, there was 0 build up to the encounter

Yes but Arthas was the final boss of the entire expansion. Kil'jaeden isn't the final boss of this expansion. It really sucks I guess but he has "Not final boss" story. Usually the first raid tier has a lot of story involved with it since they kinda build the raids around the story that the zones are telling like with Heart of Fear and the Mogu thing or the Cata raid tier. The second ones are a little off usually since they're filling in for the time in between the first and last raid tiers BUT they do usually have more story than Tomb. I agree that they really took a shit with the Broken Shore this time around in terms of story. The story of the Firelands and the Throne of Thunder raids were on point albeit lacking as much story as the final bosses or first tiers IMO.

But TBH I felt just as excited seeing KJ die as I did seeing Lei Shen/Ra-den or Ragnaros. At least this dude gets an actual cutscene lol

[lockybalboa]

That was a super underwhelming end for such a prominent lore figure for sure.

[Radaney]

These are the same writers that suddenly had Archimonde, Left Hand of Sargeras, Commander of the Armies of Burning Legion who destroyed Dalaran buy building sandcastles, destroyed the World Tree and killed a Nature God of Azeroth easily 1v1 and had to be killed by an explosion that neutralised an entire zone come out of the portal out with 3 random demons in a random shitty Orc Time-travel expansion in the span of a patch and we killed him with the help of Orc Hitler who was a villain the entire expansion and the ultimate mary sue character.

What are you really expecting?

That the villain who constructed almost the entire villain lore of Warcraft, created the Lich King in his personal dimension of torture, the seemingly most intelligent character in the entire series, can read the minds of Illidan, Kael'thas and Vashj with ease from across time and space and scared almost the entire roster of characters in this game to shit themselves actually be given some justice?

These two characters were Scourge of the Universe. We thought Arthas and the Scourge are bad on Azeroth? Well KJ, Archimonde and the Burning Legion are the Immortal 25,000+ year old Inter-Galactic version and we just punched them to death with ease.

Even Arthas one shot us with ease.

Lol. Blizzard writers are literal garbage, all hype with no pay off.

[Volitar]

Blizzard sucks at storytelling?

[Zyky]

Ehm... excuse me blizzard aren't you maybe by chance forgetting who Kil'Jaeden is? This dude is like top 2 in charismatic villains of warcraft. He is by far the more recognizible eredar and basiaclly the right hand of Sargeras. He is involved in a lot of shcemes during warcraft history and he is also basically the creator of the lich king and the Frozen Throne. (and don't get me started on Archimonde and Mannoroth, they was treated like stupids too)
Then why all we get is a patch where he is the end boss with no build up to his defeat whatsoever.

The end cinematic is nicely done as always, but the Kil'jaeden character is treated completely different then what he was. You just go there, defeat him, he tells Velen he was envious of hima dn that he didn't think the Burning legion could be stoped, then dies. Are you for real?
This dude should show no redemption by now, Kil'Jaeden has already shown multiple time that he thinks we all live to serve , and in his case his vision is to serve for Sargeras and the domination of the legion.

So overall i think his whole character got fked up quite badly considering how important he is to the overall WoW lore.

He showed a hint of redemption back for the patch video. Where he was arguing with Sargeras about giving up his world. Truth is we barely saw KJ so we don't really know if he regretted it or that he often thought about what could have been.

[Makorus]

So you want an one-dimensional character with no depth who is evil for the sake of being evil.

I mean, the cinematic was a right step but it doesnt help if he only has 3 minutes of screentime the whole expansion.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

No dude, you can't possibly expect everybody to accept your opinion as a fact. Kil'jaeden was a random Eredar who randomly manifested himself to Illidan in W3, and randomly Illidan went along with his random plan. He was portrayed as this super powerful dude, and we were supposed to eat it just because.

I can think of at least 10 villains in wow i'd put ahead of Kil'jaeden.

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Archimonde, being the show off and more of a "in your face" kind of guy, would show his dominance by being huge and towering over everything. Kil'jaeden, however, is more about magic and tactical planning

That was Archimonde.

[Moadar]

Feels weird thinking back to being a teenager and reading the warcraft 2 manual lore about KJ and now seeing how he ended up.

[Bathory]

I definitely think KJ should have had more of a Lich King presence throughout the expansion.

[Deleted]

I see that most people on this post dont really understand the character. Kil'Jaeden was NEVER the all mighty evil that Archimonde was.
While Archie killed this underlings with no remorse for failure, Kil always was the guy that even though punished offered seconds choices.

In the end he was just a misguided soul that felt " betrayed " by his best friend... a friend he always looked up to and envied. A friend that wouldnt even hear is pleas about the Legion and how doomed they were if they didnt accept the " gift ". In the end he just felt betrayed... even if he knew deep down he was wrong, he was just a coward that choose life over being killed... and you could really feel that even though he acted evil and all mighty he always felt like he was putting on a show. Like on the patch cinematic where you could really see him being hurt by Velen calling him a monster.

In the end, like it or not, Kil'jaeden was someone that was broken. Delighted on inflicting pain into others as if that would justify his choise of dooming his people to " save" them.

The final touch of Velen, that silent " i forgive you brother " was all that he wanted in these 10.000's of years. Even if he never admit it. Why else chase the Draenei all over the stars while Archiemonde just didnt give a crap?

Like it or not this was the true character of Kil'Jaeden. And it was masterfully portrayed. The deceiver was deceiving himself in the end.

And apparently deceived us all.

I swear "The who - Behind blue eyes" played in the back of my head while i was reading this.

[GSfaded]

Kil'Jedean is a betch!

[Rustedsaint]

I honestly think that he was broken from what was done to his world and this was more of a mercy killing then anything.
Guy try's to do everything his big bad boss wanted him to do but he loses his world, his friends and is himself twisted by fel power(preety sure this really hurts) only to constantly lose to a group of meddlesome kids who didn't have to sacrifice half of what he has(not counting dhs)

[Heladys]

Because he was a punk-ass fool. That's why.

[Deleted]

These are the same writers that suddenly had Archimonde, Left Hand of Sargeras, Commander of the Armies of Burning Legion who destroyed Dalaran buy building sandcastles, destroyed the World Tree and killed a Nature God of Azeroth easily 1v1 and had to be killed by an explosion that neutralised an entire zone come out of the portal out with 3 random demons in a random shitty Orc Time-travel expansion in the span of a patch and we killed him with the help of Orc Hitler who was a villain the entire expansion and the ultimate mary sue character.

What are you really expecting?

That the villain who constructed almost the entire villain lore of Warcraft, created the Lich King in his personal dimension of torture, the seemingly most intelligent character in the entire series, can read the minds of Illidan, Kael'thas and Vashj with ease from across time and space and scared almost the entire roster of characters in this game to shit themselves actually be given some justice?

These two characters were Scourge of the Universe. We thought Arthas and the Scourge are bad on Azeroth? Well KJ, Archimonde and the Burning Legion are the Immortal 25,000+ year old Inter-Galactic version and we just punched them to death with ease.

Even Arthas one shot us with ease.

Lol. Blizzard writers are literal garbage, all hype with no pay off.

Yes, this is exactly what my original post was about. You can't have Archimodne and Kil'Jaeden be galactic badasses and all of a sudden they die like any other noname boss. I mean whoever played warcraft 3 knows what i'm talking about. Archimonde to me was the number one villain in Warcraft until WoW fked him up at every twist and turn. Same goes for Mannoroth. Mannoroth is the reason whydamn orcs are green, but all Blizz did was making him apig with a sword dieing in every timeline in every way possible. HOW CAN HE DIE IN THE DAMN CINEMATIC INTRO OF WOD. THAT'S NONSENSE

[JayJadame]

Compare cunning vile and dreadful KJ which created LK with scourge to follow, corrupted orcs, slaughtered dranei in draenor, killed Cenarius and made illidan vashj and kael his little bitches in wс3 to pathetic little cunt players easily bithchslapped in tomb.

Also compare his sunwell lines to tomb lines.

Is it even warcraft lore at that point?

Question is purely rhetorical.