The Jailer: A completely ineffective villain

[Nemah]

While I don't disagree, I kind of feel like it's still too early to tell. It's not like the Jailer is the T1 boss of the expansion. I think the main issue has to do with B's ability to actually storytell anymore. In any particular genre, who wouldn't be interested in going up against the master of the afterlife/hell/etc. Kind of feels like they bit off more than they can chew with the concept in my opinion. The good news is that storytelling can be flexible if you're willing to take risks, and they could "save" it.

Semantics - but wasn't Argus more of a tool or an instrument than an actual villain?

[Grimbold21]

This isn't about Sylvannas or the Jailer. It's about the conflict between the different dimensions, realms or whatever it is you called them.

[Blackmist]

"Nobody escapes The Maw!"

Motherfucker, there's a doorway right there. What did you think it was for?

[Cæli]

that's because he's not a villain... he only does his job, the villain of shadowlands is the arbiter
the jailer will probably die though, maybe arthas will replace him

[Kumorii]

The problem is that right now we're supposed to be terribly impressed, which is the idea of an expansion's villain, somebody you really want to hate, to work towards defeating him the whole expansion, and what we get is... A bald dude with a chain-fetish, the overriding feeling is "Who is this guy? why do we care?"

As far as lore-interest goes, i'm pretty sure more people want to know what happens to Sylvanas in the end than the Jailer, we don't know this Jailer-dude from Adam, what has he done to us that makes us go "Oh yeah, the bastard needs to die"?

Mystery is a good thing, in moderation, Blizz overdid it though, Sylvanas' schemes on top of plans with a sprinkling of ploys has become meme-material, and the Jailer? He... dropped Baine off a cliff, and growled menacingly a bit, right before we walked out of the insecapable maw, i guess?

We are? I get the feeling we are supposed to be curious what his plans are... not impressed.

[OrcsRLame]

I wouldn't call him ineffective, so much as impersonal. That is to say the current conflict doesn't feel personal. The Jailer seems much like a hurricane. He's powerful and inconvenient, dangerous and if he's up in your grill maybe even scary. But there's no good reason for us to hate him or empathize with him. I don't care about him on a personal level. Playing the game doesn't make me want to take revenge on him, it doesn't make me feel sorry for him or anything like that.

He is, in a word, boring.

[Daronokk]

Agreed. This feels like a filler expansion and a bad fanfiction made by a child.

[Arganis]

Imo the Jailer is fine. They've started building him up and he clearly has the upper hand. This is probably one of the first expansions in which the villain actually makes you feel like he might do some damage. You're actually not sure what's going to happen next and that to me contradicts this notion that the Jailer is a meanginless threat.

In most WoW expansions the main villain is a joke. In Classic we had essentially nobody, in BC we had Illidan who literally sat in BT the whole time being totally meaningless. Illidan was eventually replaced with KJ and for the first time WoW had a real threat, except it lasted one content patch and was totally predictable.

Then came WotLK where they learned from the previous expansions and decided to make Arthas engaging but he soon became a cartoon villain: "Tremble before my great power, my minions will kill you... actually this boss will kill you... I'm gonna kill you!!! Eventually..." it was a total joke. He never posed any threat, stayed in ICC and got his ass handed to him.

Deathwing in cataclysm continued the cartoon villain feel but this time they wanted him to be more of a distant threat, so distant in fact that he become to totally irrelevant.

Now we have MOP in which there was no villain literally until the last minute, behold the crazy MOGA (make orcs great again) orc, who preaches hate and division and totally think that shitting all over the orcish institutions to became the dear leader of the orcs was a good idea until people (who aren't insane) finally said enough is enough.

... euh forgot WoD... well that expansion sort of doesn't count because they totally dropped the ball. There was room to work on Grom and possibly Gul'dan (who has a lot more presence) but they totally just let the expansion die in favor of Legion and pulled Archimonde out of their asses to say "hey look! A totally real threat!" for like one boss fight.... so, ya, WoD was essentially DOA in that regard as well.

Finally we got Legion. Now that is the only expansion where Blizz go most things right. There's many villains, they all feel like threats from Gul'dan to KJ (part 2) to Sargeras they keep you guessing what will happen next and what they might actually be able to accomplish. The being said, at no point do you feel like they might actually gain any ground.

BFA obviously didn't have a clear villain like MOP, so we went back to the surprise villain concept: "Surprise Azhsara and N'zot!!!" so totally didn't see that coming aaaaaand they're dead.... next!

TL;DR

So ya, no, the Jailer is doing just fine. He strikes a decent balance and makes you wonder how he'll be stopped and how far he'll go. That's good enough and having him pop up left and right like Arthas, full of empty threats would not help.

Honestly, it's hard to make something threatening when nothing bad ever happens. Want a real threat? Then people have to die and bad things have to happen but the muppets always want to win win win so we can't have that.

[thedingleberry]

I feel like I would find him more threatening if he had some shoes on. He just looks like a homeless guy with a big necklace.

[Grimalkin of Old]

A big red flag is when any story uses a generic word for a name (The Jailer, The Templar, The Scoundrel). This speaks a lot about how the storyteller percieves the character, and his lack of belief that the reader/player will feel enough connection to the story in order to remember the actual name.

[Kelathos]

This villain is detached from Azeroth. He means nothing to me, or to it.

His forces need some action to establish a presence. Maybe if Stormwind fell to the realm of death. Blizzard doesn't do bold though. So maybe the Jailor will score some victory in the Shadowlands, maybe, but that'd be the full extent of it. Honestly after the Sylvanas debacle you know Blizzard's writers have limitations. The game as a whole just isn't focused around telling a well crafted, cohesive story, and that hurts WoW a lot.

Heck, in the past MUCH of WoW's story has been told to us in books. Including recently. Calia, who?

[Asrialol]

Considering The Jailor and, with the help of Denathrius, is what basically caused Sargeras to be mad, started pretty much every shit that's gone wrong - I'd say he's far more interesting and threatening than every other bad boy we've fought.

I mean, people seem to find Kil'Jaeden, Lich King and even Garrosh to be interesting? They're constructs created because of the Jailor and his allies. Deathwing more interesting than Jailer? What. Deathwing is boring. Neltharion was interesting, though, but not the Deathwing persona.

Some people just don't like not knowing everything there is about something I guess.

- - - Updated - - -

A big red flag is when any story uses a generic word for a name (The Jailer, The Templar, The Scoundrel). This speaks a lot about how the storyteller percieves the character, and his lack of belief that the reader/player will feel enough connection to the story in order to remember the actual name.

Indeed, kinda like Lich King.

- - - Updated - - -

Agreed. This feels like a filler expansion and a bad fanfiction made by a child.

This post is as amusing as your post history is. Bookmarked.

[Varitok]

You literally described every big bad wow has ever seen.

Spoiler alert! We defeat the jailer before the expansion ends. Oh that wasn't a spoiler? Well than of course you find him ineffective

Ineffectiveness and being able to defeat them are two different things. The LK for all intents and purposes had a perfect plan. He killed us, he was going to have the most powerful army on the planet if not for The Light saving Tirion.

[bagina]

What the story is really missing right now is some flashbacks. Let us peek into Jailer's past, let us see what he'd done and what had been done to him, give us a chance to know him. Even better, give us a flashback of his first meeting with Sylvanas, why did she join him, what did he say to her, fucking anything! Don't wait until he's defeated to reveal some info, because by that point no one will fucking care anymore. What the hell. I want the same video like the one of Guldan's past made for the Jailer as well. STAT

[draugril]

The expansion practically beats us over the head with the notion that his motivations and goals are going to be a lot more complex than they initially seem. I think its more than obvious that he was the original arbiter and the others disagreed with his judgement and banished him.

Problem is, I can't recall a single time WoW has pulled off "subtle" and "complex" well.

They are (or were) fantastic at doing big, stupid and fun story. That's what they should stick with.

The biggest issue is that the current stable of writers treat character development and plot twists as the same thing. This results in the audience not caring about those plot twists because you're not invested in the characters at all since they refuse to characterize them outside of those big narrative reveals, and erodes what little attachment we have to those characters because we cannot expect consistent characterization.

They're constantly attempting to manipulate our expectations towards a certain end simply so they can subvert the expectation they set up.

It makes everything so unsatisfying.

[Newname1234567890]

Opinion presented as fact.


Opinion.


Opinion.

Let's see what actually happens throughout the entire expansion, when we have the entire storyline available, before judging him one way or the other.

It's not presented as fact. It literally starts with "I put it to you"....

Do you think opinions are irrelevant to discussion of media?

[mysticx]

A big red flag is when any story uses a generic word for a name (The Jailer, The Templar, The Scoundrel). This speaks a lot about how the storyteller percieves the character, and his lack of belief that the reader/player will feel enough connection to the story in order to remember the actual name.

That's the main problem here: What does he want? Destroy everything! (Ooh, never had a villain try *that* before! /eyeroll), why does he want it? Not a clue! Why do so many people go along with his plan? No idea!

Illidan, Arthas, the Legion, they had backstories, they came from somewhere and went down a path which led up to them trying to destroy everything, the Jailer just... pops up from nowhere, all we know is that "The first ones" locked him in the maw because... reasons, i guess...

There's no character, no backstory, no motivation, not a thing, maybe Blizz has this whole epic storyline behind him ready to go, but as long as we don't know any of it, that's pretty much irrelevant.

[Feanoro]

Let's see what actually happens throughout the entire expansion, when we have the entire storyline available, before judging him one way or the other.

"Don't judge until the entire story is told!" Ah yes, the story equivalent of:

"It's only alpha! Let's wait and see!"
"It's just beta! Don't criticize!"
"Numbers pass is coming, that'll fix it!"
"Just wait until the .1 patch, we'll be fine!"
"OK, so there might be some issues, we all know it. Let's wait, one of the major patches will fix it."
"Hey guys, next expansion announced! That'll fix it!"

[Arganis]

What the story is really missing right now is some flashbacks. Let us peek into Jailer's past, let us see what he'd done and what had been done to him, give us a chance to know him. Even better, give us a flashback of his first meeting with Sylvanas, why did she join him, what did he say to her, fucking anything! Don't wait until he's defeated to reveal some info, because by that point no one will fucking care anymore. What the hell. I want the same video like the one of Guldan's past made for the Jailer as well. STAT

This is a great idea. What's not a great idea is the Jailer popping up left and right to pronounce empty threats, just so the players can see him.

Like Arthas, who's claim to fame is continuously failing to cause any damage over and over and over again, until he was deposed without ever claiming a single victory or even scoring a single setback. Sad pathetic end to a villain that single-handedly wrecked the entire EK in WC III but couldn't accomplish jack-shit from his own seat of power with an endless army and the power of the LK at his command.

[blankfaced]

Like someone else said, none of the villains in WoW are threatening. We know we're all going to survive and that the villain is going to lose....

You're looking for something that has never existed in WoW.....ever.