when there's a clear antagonist is the game boring?

[Sackman]

I have a simple fix. Kill Deathwing via quests with the help of Alexstrasza, let him die. But then at the end, the twist, you think "wtf this is tsupid" etc etc all the way through, you play off against an old god or w/e at the end.

Then in near defeat of the old god after a massive difficult lengthy battle, the god erupts and bursts and out through a maelstrom of blood comes Deathwing, the Undying. (He pwnt Nax). To give you another fight making the end raid an epic gear check and wonderful twist you only learn after doing the final fight on heroic or something.

[DownButStillOut]

Clear antagonist? Good for lore.
Not so sure Antaginist? Bad for Lore.

I think the clear antagonist gives players something to focus on and are determined to kill this such antagonist, I dont think they messed up Wotlk with the antagonist, they messed up thinking the player-base was patient.

[diox990]

illidan is not dead, source? me.

actually i believe you

[Powerogue]

twists are always good, we seem to progress with a fairly straightforward goal: kill bad guy. i think they threw us a curveball in BC a little with kael'thas and kil'jaeden, but it didn't feel that epic.

[AlexGrey]

That's the thing with Catalcysm, is Deathwing, being as powerful as he is, is still JUST a pawn to the Old Gods. I don't think he will be last boss at all.

[sicness]

Did you not do the Black Temple quest line? One of the best quest lines ever created imo, and I'm not even into that sort of stuff, and that's with knowing Illidan was the final boss.

[redsunrising15]

Although more and more all it's serving to do is make it clear that Blizzard wants to treat the Horde as the more noble side by comparison by making the Alliance less and less noble.

Care to elaborate?

How was it not noble when, after crushing the Horde in an aerial battle, and taking down the Lich King's greatest Death Knight, Varian ordered Muradin to stand down and let Saurfang retrieve his son. Honestly, I get chocked up listening to the dialogue after that fight every week....

[Aphrel]

i whould prefer had ulduar with yogg and alga been teh expansion finals here..

whould not ahve been hard to make more obvious connections between arthas and yogg'saron to make the heroes realize arthas was a puppet for a greater power etc..

[jb226]

I don't think the problem with the WOTLK setup was knowing the villain, but rather how little most of what we did had to do with him. The quests did a decent job of involving him, but unfortunately they all took the form of "Hi, I'm the Lich King! I've been behind this massive quest chain you just completed all along! Despite the fact that you're just one person and you will need 9 or 24 friends to have a chance against me, I'm going to let you live because as you've probably figured out by now, I'm the end villain, not the middle of questing villain. Duh." It's fun to see him a few times but it gets stale after you're spared at every encounter, and I can think of at least three.

But the raids were even worse. Naxx was a recycled raid, and while, quite honestly, it was probably my favorite raid of the expansion on its own merits (I had never seen the original) it's hard to argue it had much to do with the Lich King. "This same raid you did several years ago now belong to the LICH KING RAAOWRWRWR." Nah, sorry.

Ulduar? Arguably a bigger threat than the Lich King himself, but rather than being the top raid of the expansion or at least second-to-top, it's just sort of dropped in randomly. "And now an interlude from chasing the Lich King, because an OLD GOD IS BEHIND THINGS RAAOWRWRWR." Again, a fun raid on its own merits but cobbled together at best in terms of actually being part of the story you're playing through. Somebody else mentioned that they considered Yogg-Saron to be the biggest boss of the expansion and I'd find it hard to argue from a lore perspective, but not via the way he's actually treated in-game.

Then there's TOC. I mean, really? We'll stop chasing the Lich King for a while because we need to hone our skills. You know, by mounting animals and jousting at target dummies and occasionally killing a few beasts that are apparently so little a threat that they can be captured for our amusements, none of which we will actually be doing in ICC when we decide to resume the fight to save all of mankind (it can wait, really). Killing Kel'thuzad and Yogg-Saron wasn't preparation enough. Icehowl is the real challenge. And perhaps worst of all, they try--in vain in my opinion--to tie it to the Lich King by making him make yet another appearance in which he does not simply obliterate you on sight, and then drops you down to fight Anub'arak who you have not only killed before but who could probably have had his own entire expansion of lore, yet is burned in the raid that had the absolute least to do with the expansion you're playing.

It just really felt like during the entire expansion we played, that raids were not used as plot devices. I don't mind Deathwing being the final boss or knowing it in advance, I'd just like the raids before to build up to him or work to weaken him from a plot perspective somehow instead of just feeling like "here's a raid. It's related to the Lich King, we swear."

[AlexGrey]

i whould prefer had ulduar with yogg and alga been teh expansion finals here..

whould not ahve been hard to make more obvious connections between arthas and yogg'saron to make the heroes realize arthas was a puppet for a greater power etc..

yaaa.... But Arthas WAS the last boss, because although his creation may have been in part to the Old Gods, he was not their puppet. In fact I think Icecrown's armies could have overwhelmed Storm Peaks and Ulduar, but The Lich King chose not to because it was too risky with the Alliance/Horde front at his doorstep.

in Cataclysm, however, the Old Gods could be a more feasible ultimate threat.

[Exiztence]

Illidan was the major enemy for Burning Crusade. Sunwell was more of a tack-on to the story to hold players over until Wrath came out. KJ did have his place, but think about it. SSC and Vashj, TK and Kael are both tied to Illidan. KJ even has tied to Illidan. Much more revolved around him then KJ, so its feasible to see Illidan as the main boss of TBC.

By your logic here, would you claim Halion as the final boss of Wrath? Halion and KJ may be the last bosses of their expansions, but that dosent mean they were the main enemy.


Edit: I think Yogg-Saron and C'thun are more likely the first of the bosses for a future expasnion, possibly even further into cataclysm due to DW's relation to the Old Gods. May just be me, but I felt both of them were a bit out of place in the flow of things, so their significance is still likely to come.

KJ was more like the secret antagonist revealed after u killed KT and he gave his speach in Shattrath, you didn't see it coming but it was proper end of expansion in difficulty and epicness. (Illidan was cool still tho)

[loop not defined]

Yup, And I believe Deathwing won't be the final boss here either, after all, He was only a pawn in the Old God's games

Wouldn't that be awesome, though? They promise us a clearly-defined antagonist, spend an entire expansion building this dude up as the penultimate badass...and then in the last major content patch, he's killed by an Old God - not us - and this thing's going to...I don't know, snort all of Azeroth up like he's taking a hit (Giant Eye > Mouths > Nose?).

Hmmm....maybe not.

[Skilz]

I hope they come up with something new for Cata really. I didn't like the whole thing where you knew Arthas was the bad guy and you knew you had to kill him and not only that but he let you go like 10 times instead of just fucking oneshotting you. (And yes I know that was because he wanted to the greatest champions his slaves, but if he had killed us he wouldn't have needed us to be his slaves.)