Why does blizzard waste their villains so much

[cparle87]

No one cares about Grom because his suddenly personality flip at the end of WoD was unexplained

What personality flip was that? His army was destroyed, his son who came to the past to warn him about boogeymen was both dead and revealed as a liar, and despite everything he did to prevent it he and his people ended up being used as Legion pawns. Wanting to go back to whatever semblence of peaceful life he could seems pretty reasonable.

[Koryn123]

IMO the Old God "retcon" was Blizzard's way of being like "oh no, we had players beat the old gods without replacing them with anything...uh...uhm...q-quick! Press the Dragon Ball Z button! Th-the Old Gods were created by the Void Lords! This new big bad is even bigger and badder than the previous one! Oooooooh scary! The stakes were high before, but now they're higher! Please re-sub!"

Personally, I don't care about the old gods, Titans, or Legion. As far as I'm concerned, any interest in them was only as a result of their involvement in building the world of Azeroth that we know. The old gods' role in creation of the various bug races, the Legion's manipulation of the orcs setting in motion all of the Warcraft story, the titans' role in creating several of the races of Azeroth, etc. I only ever cared slightly about them because they're the deep history of the world.

Keyword: History. I don't want to know the mysteries of the WoW universe. I want to explore the relationships and politics between the kingdoms. If WoW were about the old areas of Azeroth and they were constantly updating them each expansion, keeping previous versions accessible via Zidormi, I'd be incredibly invested in the story.

I want the story to focus on Azeroth, particularly Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. It's beyond dumb that nothing ever happens there anymore except in the major city of the one race heading up the faction's main story. If BfA had been about AZEROTH and not two rinky dink islands, it would've been cooler. Alliance should've used the Forsaken's abandonment of Capital City to solidify their hold on Lordaeron and resettle it for humanity.

"Bigger and Badder Bad Guy" and "IT'S GONNA BE THE END OF THE WORLD OH NO" can only take you so far without a reset of the stakes. We need the stakes to go down and focus on regional conflicts our races can handle themselves like in Classic. We need some time to re-establish the state of the world and take inventory of why we should be fighting. At some point, it's hard to rationalize why the rest of the Horde stays with the orcs, when 90% of their conflicts would be gone if the orcs didn't have the armies of the other races at their backs to encourage their wars.

Relationships and politics without power creep is a sustainable story direction. Bring things back to Vanilla levels where you don't have any single characters who are basically gods. What makes Medivh so special when it seems Khadgar, Jaina, Thrall, Gul'dan, or anyone else Blizzard feels like pushing seems to be capable of doing what he does?

What we need is a filler expansion. Not filler as in lame anime episodes, but filler in that those episodes usually center around the characters' home lives and their relationships with their families and friends, and smaller problems that don't require the entire arc to resolve. I care so much more about what's going on with the Scarlet Crusade and small pockets of Scourge than I do "Big Bad Blizzard Pulled From Thin Air But Has Been There All Along We Promise #51". They finished off the legion after like 20 years in the franchise and think they can whip up another big bad in an expansion and have them dead by the end of it and have us care at all.

[Kithelle]

What personality flip was that? His army was destroyed, his son who came to the past to warn him about boogeymen was both dead and revealed as a liar, and despite everything he did to prevent it he and his people ended up being used as Legion pawns. Wanting to go back to whatever semblence of peaceful life he could seems pretty reasonable.

It was like professional wrestling, instant flip from heel to hero...Draenei even embraced him which made no sense.

[Accendor]

Azshara is not being swept under the rug, she's going off to claim the true throne.

N'Zoth did not die in one patch, he hid himself inside Xal'atath to free himself from Azeroth's surface. He's likely off to work on claiming the true prize.

I'll grant that many villains have been misused, notably the lack of any deception from the Deceiver during Broken Shore, but WoW is ultimately about killing bosses. The ludonarrative dissonance of killing a boss and then have the game telling you that you lost isn't fun. Near enough every villain we've ever fought died in one patch unless it was "merely a setback".

Also Azshara was toying with us but underestimated the power of the Heart of Azeroth.

All of that is fanfiction. Stop writing the story for Blizzard.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

All of that is fanfiction. Stop writing the story for Blizzard.

Going off to claim the throne is a direct quote from Azshara.

Azshara toying with us is evident from her dialogue throughout the fight.

N'Zoth being in Xal'atath is the only decent explanation for its role in the expansion.

[Soon-TM]

N'zoth and Old Gods in general are trash since their retcon.

So much this. It's sad that the Vanilla's depiction of Old Gods is better than Cata's, which in turn is better than the BfA crap, aka "the old god expansion"

[Cathfaern]

Kil’jaeden, the most influental villain in all of warcraft. Swept under the rug in one patch. He should have been the final boss, not argus

Archimonde, appears out of nowhere and dies permanently

Azshara, one of the most hyped villains in all of warcraft, had like 3 MINOR appearances ingame (Darkshore, WoT, and broken isles) before being swept under the rug

Grommash, dies off screen

Nzoth, hyped up since cata, dies in 1 patch

Deathwing, a master manipulator, instead is just a big dragon that breathes fire

Did kelthuzad even do anything outside of naxxramas? Literally the master of the scourge behind only the lich king

It gets incredibly lame after a while. Why can’t we have villains that do amazing crazy stuff and not fail all the time? Prehaps stop making every character a mary sue. Azshara destroyed Aszuna with a snap of her fingers but can’t take on a human mage and a ranger?

I think the main problem is that how MMOs and RPGs work in general: the villains are always an all-powerful creature. They are not just a mastermind, but also hard to kill and cunning and have powerful magic and so on. They may have some servants, but those are just trash (many times literally). This means that you will have a one-on-one combat with them. But then you have two option: you fight them for a while and they escape. Or they die. The first one is really frustrating, especially for content ending dungeons. But I think it would be totally frustrating to have a main villain for an expansion and then you would have to fight with it in 3 raids and defeat only in the last one, because otherwise they would always escape.

What would be a much better setting, what happens in RTS games. There the average villains is not much harder to kill than a single player. But they have a huge army, and that army is hard to defeat. It also makes sense to have a main villain for an expansion (or more) and fight with them multiple times, because well, armies are simply retreat. Or at least the villain does not need a deus ex machina to escape you, because their armies guard them. But the most likely setting would be that you encounter them during the beginning of a raid and they simply leave the combat to one of their general. And only after you defeat all the best generals would the main villain stay in the battlefield. Which is really much more realistic. Of course you can always add some exceptions where the villain itself is also a main threat (like Deathwing in WoW) to spice it up a bit.

I think it happened because MMOs evolved from RPGs. In RPGs having this army style does not make sense, because you - the player - also a lone wolf. So the villain have to be a lone wolf because otherwise you are the mary sue. And when they started to make MMOs they simply took an RPG and added more player character. Which a logical evolutionary step, but lead to what we have currently. But in MMOs it would totally be possible to go closer to the RTS style. Ironically Vanilla WoW was really close to that with how the player character was not an all powerful hero which is a requisite for this setting, but the boss fights still followed the RPG style.

[Aucald]

I just wonder how people who have a problem with it would solve it?

I mean...do you want to encounter....say...Arthas all the time while questing? Even fight him? Why would he let you live? This "Oh, here fight my minion, I am too busy and will teleport away" is already getting tired and the equivalent of a Bond villain talking too much and giving the hero time to escape.

Or as Ashzara did: Drag our ships to the depths, create an artificial globe where we can live at the bottom of the ocean, make all the water animal life magically not die because now they need to breath air and go "Mwhahaha...now amuse me by doing daily quests". So you occasionally also get her as the voice from off screen, commenting on what you do.

Doesn't work for you either, I guess?

How about what they did with Hellscream? We followed his transformation and fall from Grace. Still not working?

I kinda liked what they did with Deathwing...as in...you could be in a zone and he would fly over and fry everything (never happened to me though). But how would you show him as a Master Schemer?

Then ofc there are these big bads that just would see the player as an unworthy insect and wouldn't care about us, unless we show up on their doorstep with help. Them scheming would mean constant cutscenes showing what they do? Because nobody reads quest text?

I would still have loved Nyalotha as a zone like Suramar, outskirts and a big city, N'zoths presence everywhere.

As it is, Blizzard did use Legion and BfA assaults to regularely show what the baddies are up to...attacking us. But that also becomes old quick and actually laugheable when they do it in zones where nobody plays anymore (Broken Shore), yet still bugger off after 6 hours without need. Guess they need to go home and punch their card. Shift over...time for dinner and TV.

I think the Arthas story in WotLK generally worked, and the writers foreshadowed it aptly enough in the various quests and encounters with the Arthas Lich King during the experience. He ultimately wants the PC's to emulate his journey - growing in power, being forced to make critical decisions, all so that they can ascend to his throne room full of power and self-importance, then turned into mighty generals of the Scourge when they fall to his power. The story works, and Arthas *almost* wins in the end, he just doesn't factor the Light into his plans (another interesting little narrative irony) and Tirion manages to shatter Frostmourne, allowing us to go free once more when the shade of Terenas Menethil brings us back to life. The only real issue with Arthas is that he showed up a few too many times, giving the players the impression that he was a bit of a hammy villain. This, I think, was an overreaction to the issues with TBC where Illidan had the opposite problem, and suffered by being too out of focus. Wasn't a major problem, though YMMV.

Deathwing's characterization was way off for me - I was used to the scheming and intelligent Deathwing from Day of the Dragon, Beyond the Dark Portal, and other stories. Deathwing in Cata came off more as a mindless destructive force, and the only example where he deviated from that was the Thrall short story Charge of the Aspects, where he gives Thrall a justification (from his own perspective) for his fall from grace. Unfortunately this isn't shown in-game at all, and Deathwing even had a unique humanoid model he never actually uses, one that could've been used to make him more relatable. I also felt the de-powering of the Aspects was pretty unnecessary, but that was more a personal opinion than an issue with the narrative, per se. The "Age of Mortals" thing felt like an unnecessary addendum, and the explanation of the Aspects' stewardship of Azeroth came across as shoehorned into the plot, also rather unnecessarily. Some personal interaction with Deathwing would've been nice, even if it was showcased with the other NPC's. A showdown with his bothers and sisters would've been awesome, perhaps a sort of recreation of their showdown with him in Day of the Dragon, but with the opposite result of Deathwing being the victor, which would go far towards explaining the need for the PC's to be part of the fight (more than the existing narrative does).

Garrosh's arc was okay in my view, I didn't really have an issue with his fall from grace as I sort of expected it to go that way. I felt it was pretty strongly foreshadowed in The Shattering and again in Wolfheart, the problem there is that both those examples are external to the game and it becomes a case of "show, don't tell" which if we're to be honest is a problem with WoW's storytelling in a more general sense. We needed to see more of Garrosh's (bad) decision-making processes, how he refused the wisdom of advisers and peers, instead opting to surround himself with sycophants and yes-men who failed to challenge his ideas or offer up alternatives. This lack of character exploration was also made more a problem by the writers', uh, confusion as to how his character was to develop (e.g. the Stonetalon issue). What you ended up with was a charismatic Warchief who seemed to come across as no-nonsense and honorable, who then underwent a mostly off-screen devolution into the slavering tyrant we see in MoP. Like Deathwing above, the issue here would be resolved by more essential storytelling, organically showing in-game what happened to Garrosh and why he chose the path he did.

Ditto for Azshara, who probably suffers the worst from this "show, don't tell" issue. I think much of BfA's 8.2 story-arc could've been fixed by just letting us in on the "mystery" of Azshara and Sylvanas' connection and their plan to lure the bearer of the Heart of Azeroth to N'Zoth's prison to release him. This is why she opens Nazjatar to us, and why she goads us to blaze our way to her palace - using the sacrifice of her lieutenants to mask the fact that it was all intentional and put us off-guard for swerve to come. This would solve some of Sylvanas' characterization issues as well, in addition to the writers trying to play both ends against the middle, so to speak, trying to drum up some form of player choice where ultimately there could be none (and shouldn't have been any). I'm all for player choice and being able to make decisions that the plot reflects to a degree - but this was the wrong context in which to make that addition.

As for N'Zoth, well, I think his story was completely botched in 8.3 - all the way from his ultimate goals, his characterization, the Ny'alotha reveal, and everything else. I agree with most people who felt N'Zoth deserved an expansion of his own, and that his inclusion as the final boss of BfA was both shoehorned in and ultimately an anticlimax. In a way, one of the main issues with BfA from a narrative perspective is that it was just trying to do too much in a single expansion - it had way too many B-plots trying in vain to be A-plots and eating the scenery away from what was supposed to be the actual A-plot (the faction war). You had Sylvanas and her involvement with the Shadowlands plot to come, Xal'atath and her as-yet unknown plot(s), Azshara and her plotting, N'Zoth striving to free himself, the factions at complete war with one another - all competing for the same finite narrative space, and in some instances being mutually exclusive with one another. N'Zoth's resolution ultimately suffers the worst from this, in my view, as he essentially came out of left field to take over as the expansion's main antagonist only to be put to bed unrealistically quickly - ending the faction war far too abruptly and then seguing into the entirely unrelated Shadowlands story-arc without so much as a by your leave. N'Zoth was essentially used as a (mostly failed) stumble, and as both a character and a plot-point he deserved better than that (especially with his long and rather epic build-up since Cata). Even worse than "show, don't tell," BfA managed to fail to show multiple stories and then put them to bed unrealistically and abruptly. Would've been far better to just pick a particular narrative thread and focus on that, and choose perhaps one B-plot and let it happen in the background as per usual. Trying to do too much, too quickly, basically dragged all the BfA arcs down into the muck.

[Daronokk]

Grommash, dies off screen

He's 99% sure not dead though. If anyone dies off screen it's the easiest way to bring them back later.

If Blizzard ever wants to do anything the the Lightbound and a 'Holy can be evil as well' expansion then I'm sure Grommash will show up again.

[Accendor]

N'Zoth being in Xal'atath is the only decent explanation for its role in the expansion.

His role in the expansion was to be the monster of the year.

There are two possibilities here:

1. The fanfiction is wrong, in which case he is just dead now.
2. The fanfiction is right (unlikely) and that furthermore shows that nothing in WoW is of any relevance at all and death means nothing.

Both are equally bad.

[Aucald]

Thanks for that lengthy reply. I didn't read any novels / books, so I have to rely on what the game tells me. Deathwing being so different in the books is indeed a revelation. He does come across as just a drogon torching stuff in Cata.

And I do agree on N'zoth (also Ashzara) - man...I love watching videos about Lovecraftian lore (where Blizzard obviously gets inspiration) and I want much more of that...I want to live and quest in it...not just have a few assaults.

I often enjoy the WoW novels because they breathe so much life in a narrative sense into the game, but an unfortunate drawback (which has only grown in scope and damage with newer offerings) is that they don't have a wide appeal, and often aren't relayed in-game in any real way. The more recent trend in this bridging novels like Shadows Rising or Before the Storm make it so that vast and important elements of the story never get related to the players in any real sense, and unless you crack open the novels you can miss a lot of these elements.

Barring bottle-stories and one-offs, I think WoW would be much better served if *all* important story beats had an in-game representation - even if it's just a cutscene recap or one of those in-game cinematic flashbacks. The novels are great to expand and color the lore of WoW, but they shouldn't be the sole source of critical elements of the plot moving forward.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

His role in the expansion was to be the monster of the year.

There are two possibilities here:

1. The fanfiction is wrong, in which case he is just dead now.
2. The fanfiction is right (unlikely) and that furthermore shows that nothing in WoW is of any relevance at all and death means nothing.

Both are equally bad.

I meant Xal'atath's role, not N'Zoth's. Follow its plot thread through.

Xal'atath appears during the build-up to Crucible of Storms. For no adequately explored reason, N'Zoth agrees to help Xal'atath be free of the blade. When Uun'at dies, N'Zoth commands the Horde champion to give the now empty blade to Sylvanas.
Sylvanas then makes her deal with Azshara as seen during the final boss, in which Azshara gets Xal'atath, which she believes will enable her to kill N'Zoth (it's not clear where she got that idea).
Azshara then fails to kill the Champions, and is captured by N'Zoth. Given that the Old Gods see all possible futures, it can be reasonably assumed that he knows that she might have the Blade. He does not take it from her while she is in captivity, but leaves it on her person.
We then kill Dark Inquisitor Xanesh, and receive the blade from Azshara, who tells us that we should definitely use it to break open N'Zoth's carapace.

The Crucible subplot implies that N'Zoth planned to use the knife for something, and the first thing he did was give it to Sylvanas so that she would give it to Azshara who wanted to kill him. The most likely interpretation of these facts is that N'Zoth lied to Azshara and told her that Xal'atath was his weakness so that he could use it like a soulstone.

As for death meaning nothing in Warcraft...yeah? Have you been following the lore for very long? Merely a setback has been a meme since Tempest Keep, undead exist and retain most of their personalities, orcs use rituals to commune with their dead ancestors, and magical souls like Demons, Wild Gods and Old Gods don't die permanently unless you kill them in their relevant realms. Even if this version of events isn't accurate, N'Zoth is still likely to return. During the interview when they confirmed that the Old Gods did actually die when we fought them, they also mentioned that they are unlikely to have died permanently, and may return in some other form in the future,

[Alanar]

Sylvanas keeps blasting off again and that sure as hell is annoying

It would help if she appears she would kill/do/burn something and get a scratch as well, the cut under her eye was a good move.

[Accendor]

I think the Arthas story in WotLK generally worked, and the writers foreshadowed it aptly enough in the various quests and encounters with the Arthas Lich King during the experience. He ultimately wants the PC's to emulate his journey - growing in power, being forced to make critical decisions, all so that they can ascend to his throne room full of power and self-importance, then turned into mighty generals of the Scourge when they fall to his power. The story works, and Arthas *almost* wins in the end, he just doesn't factor the Light into his plans (another interesting little narrative irony) and Tirion manages to shatter Frostmourne, allowing us to go free once more when the shade of Terenas Menethil brings us back to life. The only real issue with Arthas is that he showed up a few too many times, giving the players the impression that he was a bit of a hammy villain. This, I think, was an overreaction to the issues with TBC where Illidan had the opposite problem, and suffered by being too out of focus. Wasn't a major problem, though YMMV.

Deathwing's characterization was way off for me - I was used to the scheming and intelligent Deathwing from Day of the Dragon, Beyond the Dark Portal, and other stories. Deathwing in Cata came off more as a mindless destructive force, and the only example where he deviated from that was the Thrall short story Charge of the Aspects, where he gives Thrall a justification (from his own perspective) for his fall from grace. Unfortunately this isn't shown in-game at all, and Deathwing even had a unique humanoid model he never actually uses, one that could've been used to make him more relatable. I also felt the de-powering of the Aspects was pretty unnecessary, but that was more a personal opinion than an issue with the narrative, per se. The "Age of Mortals" thing felt like an unnecessary addendum, and the explanation of the Aspects' stewardship of Azeroth came across as shoehorned into the plot, also rather unnecessarily. Some personal interaction with Deathwing would've been nice, even if it was showcased with the other NPC's. A showdown with his bothers and sisters would've been awesome, perhaps a sort of recreation of their showdown with him in Day of the Dragon, but with the opposite result of Deathwing being the victor, which would go far towards explaining the need for the PC's to be part of the fight (more than the existing narrative does).

Garrosh's arc was okay in my view, I didn't really have an issue with his fall from grace as I sort of expected it to go that way. I felt it was pretty strongly foreshadowed in The Shattering and again in Wolfheart, the problem there is that both those examples are external to the game and it becomes a case of "show, don't tell" which if we're to be honest is a problem with WoW's storytelling in a more general sense. We needed to see more of Garrosh's (bad) decision-making processes, how he refused the wisdom of advisers and peers, instead opting to surround himself with sycophants and yes-men who failed to challenge his ideas or offer up alternatives. This lack of character exploration was also made more a problem by the writers', uh, confusion as to how his character was to develop (e.g. the Stonetalon issue). What you ended up with was a charismatic Warchief who seemed to come across as no-nonsense and honorable, who then underwent a mostly off-screen devolution into the slavering tyrant we see in MoP. Like Deathwing above, the issue here would be resolved by more essential storytelling, organically showing in-game what happened to Garrosh and why he chose the path he did.

Ditto for Azshara, who probably suffers the worst from this "show, don't tell" issue. I think much of BfA's 8.2 story-arc could've been fixed by just letting us in on the "mystery" of Azshara and Sylvanas' connection and their plan to lure the bearer of the Heart of Azeroth to N'Zoth's prison to release him. This is why she opens Nazjatar to us, and why she goads us to blaze our way to her palace - using the sacrifice of her lieutenants to mask the fact that it was all intentional and put us off-guard for swerve to come. This would solve some of Sylvanas' characterization issues as well, in addition to the writers trying to play both ends against the middle, so to speak, trying to drum up some form of player choice where ultimately there could be none (and shouldn't have been any). I'm all for player choice and being able to make decisions that the plot reflects to a degree - but this was the wrong context in which to make that addition.

As for N'Zoth, well, I think his story was completely botched in 8.3 - all the way from his ultimate goals, his characterization, the Ny'alotha reveal, and everything else. I agree with most people who felt N'Zoth deserved an expansion of his own, and that his inclusion as the final boss of BfA was both shoehorned in and ultimately an anticlimax. In a way, one of the main issues with BfA from a narrative perspective is that it was just trying to do too much in a single expansion - it had way too many B-plots trying in vain to be A-plots and eating the scenery away from what was supposed to be the actual A-plot (the faction war). You had Sylvanas and her involvement with the Shadowlands plot to come, Xal'atath and her as-yet unknown plot(s), Azshara and her plotting, N'Zoth striving to free himself, the factions at complete war with one another - all competing for the same finite narrative space, and in some instances being mutually exclusive with one another. N'Zoth's resolution ultimately suffers the worst from this, in my view, as he essentially came out of left field to take over as the expansion's main antagonist only to be put to bed unrealistically quickly - ending the faction war far too abruptly and then seguing into the entirely unrelated Shadowlands story-arc without so much as a by your leave. N'Zoth was essentially used as a (mostly failed) stumble, and as both a character and a plot-point he deserved better than that (especially with his long and rather epic build-up since Cata). Even worse than "show, don't tell," BfA managed to fail to show multiple stories and then put them to bed unrealistically and abruptly. Would've been far better to just pick a particular narrative thread and focus on that, and choose perhaps one B-plot and let it happen in the background as per usual. Trying to do too much, too quickly, basically dragged all the BfA arcs down into the muck.

This is a really good summary. Neither Ashzara, nor Nzoth nor the faction war got the ending or time in the spotlight they deserved. I disagree however with the argument that it hit Nzoth the most. I think the biggest mistake was to not put more focus on the faction war. As it stands, even when you played horde, the picture was always: Horde extremely evil and brutal and effective, Alliance always good, makes stupid decision after stupid decision, unable to defend itself and still somehow comes out on top sometimes.
The problem that I hear from s lot of people is that because of their narrative, they can not identify themselves with their factions anymore. Horde because they are officially evil now for whatever reason and alliance because the leaders are idiots and spineless.

I personally can forgive a bad story arc, but destroying the identification with my character is a big problem.

- - - Updated - - -

It would help if she appears she would kill/do/burn something and get a scratch as well, the cut under her eye was a good move.

That's actually my biggest issue I have for example with the Shadowlands trailer. The problem is not, that she beat Bolvar, the problem is that she STOMPED him and his army seemingly effortlessly and leaves behind a crying manchild.
Like... What?
Let him get a few spell hits in, even one with the hammer. You can always argue that her new power prevented her from getting oneshotted.

[Alanar]

This is a really good summary. Neither Ashzara, nor Nzoth nor the faction war got the ending or time in the spotlight they deserved. I disagree however with the argument that it hit Nzoth the most. I think the biggest mistake was to not put more focus on the faction war. As it stands, even when you played horde, the picture was always: Horde extremely evil and brutal and effective, Alliance always good, makes stupid decision after stupid decision, unable to defend itself and still somehow comes out on top sometimes.
The problem that I hear from s lot of people is that because of their narrative, they can not identify themselves with their factions anymore. Horde because they are officially evil now for whatever reason and alliance because the leaders are idiots and spineless.

I personally can forgive a bad story arc, but destroying the identification with my character is a big problem.

- - - Updated - - -



That's actually my biggest issue I have for example with the Shadowlands trailer. The problem is not, that she beat Bolvar, the problem is that she STOMPED him and his army seemingly effortlessly and leaves behind a crying manchild.
Like... What?
Let him get a few spell hits in, even one with the hammer. You can always argue that her new power prevented her from getting oneshotted.

It wasnt even an fight.. why wasnt she hit by anything?
Meanwhile random bladestorm of saurfang dis hit her and the lich king used freaking ice pillars and missed everything.

[Aucald]

This is a really good summary. Neither Ashzara, nor Nzoth nor the faction war got the ending or time in the spotlight they deserved. I disagree however with the argument that it hit Nzoth the most. I think the biggest mistake was to not put more focus on the faction war. As it stands, even when you played horde, the picture was always: Horde extremely evil and brutal and effective, Alliance always good, makes stupid decision after stupid decision, unable to defend itself and still somehow comes out on top sometimes.
The problem that I hear from s lot of people is that because of their narrative, they can not identify themselves with their factions anymore. Horde because they are officially evil now for whatever reason and alliance because the leaders are idiots and spineless.

I personally can forgive a bad story arc, but destroying the identification with my character is a big problem.

I was more focusing on WoW's specific villains as opposed to more general issues with BfA. Out of BfA's stable of villains I think N'Zoth got the worst of BfA's storytelling issues, cementing him into the "Giant Space Flea from Nowhere" trope where it didn't fit at all - a result of being shoehorned into the plot abruptly and relegating Azshara, Sylvanas, and the faction war itself into the background (or in the faction war's case just ending it altogether). N'Zoth's arc was also ended ignominiously in what is perhaps WoW's worst raid conclusion cut-scene. I know they basically blew the budget with Saurfang's Mak'gora to close out the faction war, but even still they could've scraped together a better denouement for Ny'alotha and N'Zoth than what we got.

As you imply above, BfA's real biggest issue (beyond its treatment of villains) is Teldrassil and the Horde's involvement. It's a story movement that just doesn't work for all involved - it diminishes the Horde, diminishes the Alliance, almost guts the Night Elves, and peppers both Orcs and Forsaken with innumerable unnecessary wedges. Narratively speaking it's a bridge too far, constituting a complete upheaval of the game's central status quo that the medium isn't prepared to bear - and the damage to both faction stories continues to ripple outward and is likely to only be fixed with a few judiciously applied retcons or far-fetched developments.

[TheRevenantHero]

Azshara is not being swept under the rug, she's going off to claim the true throne.

N'Zoth did not die in one patch, he hid himself inside Xal'atath to free himself from Azeroth's surface. He's likely off to work on claiming the true prize.

I'll grant that many villains have been misused, notably the lack of any deception from the Deceiver during Broken Shore, but WoW is ultimately about killing bosses. The ludonarrative dissonance of killing a boss and then have the game telling you that you lost isn't fun. Near enough every villain we've ever fought died in one patch unless it was "merely a setback".

Also Azshara was toying with us but underestimated the power of the Heart of Azeroth.

what are you talking about? N'Zoth is dead. Like...dead dead. The weapon we used against him basically deleted him from existence in the raid. We're not going to see him again.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

what are you talking about? N'Zoth is dead. Like...dead dead. The weapon we used against him basically deleted him from existence in the raid. We're not going to see him again.

See my other posts in this thread. It's very likely that he's stored himself in Xal'atath, but even if he isn't then he's likely to return during the Void expansion as he has a magical soul, meaning he can't be killed in Azeroth.

[TheRevenantHero]

See my other posts in this thread. It's very likely that he's stored himself in Xal'atath, but even if he isn't then he's likely to return during the Void expansion as he has a magical soul, meaning he can't be killed in Azeroth.

There is absolutely nothing supporting that theory. Also, sure he may show up in a Void expansion but not likely. Unless Y'Shaarj ALSO shows up. Otherwise, N'Zoth is dusted and not coming back.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

There is absolutely nothing supporting that theory. Also, sure he may show up in a Void expansion but not likely. Unless Y'Shaarj ALSO shows up. Otherwise, N'Zoth is dusted and not coming back.

The entire story of Xal'atath in BfA supports the theory. It is the most logical interpretation of what happens. Its role simply makes no sense otherwise. Blizzard have said in interviews following 8.3 that N'Zoth had plans within plans, and to assume that this was the whole story would be to "ignore what N'Zoth was trying to teach us."

And yes, Y'Shaarj would likely show up in this Void expansion, as would the other two Old Gods who we killed.