Portrayal of Kil'jaeden in Legion

[Felixon]

I've been going over the Legion story in my mind,rethinking what could be done otherwise and got to conclusion,that Legion wasted a major character. Some say,that the point of Warlords of Draenor expansion was to bring back Gul'dan. Gul'dan was the main villain in the Warlords of Draenor and the Legion until his demise in the Nighthold. Only after that, Kil'jaeden makes his appearance, in a short cutscene and later we meet him in the Tomb of Sargeras.

Now,I have a question - why the hell did we need a Gul'dan,who was Kil'jaeden's puppet,if Kil'jaeden could've gotten way more screen time and be the main jerk instead of alternative universe Gul'dan? Come on,it was Kil'jaeden,the master schemer,the jerk,who is blamed for destruction of many worlds and who destroyed entire races. Couldn't he be the one who actually creates a plan to invade the Azeroth? No,instead we wasted another major character - Archimonde,so that he could send an alternative,improved version of Gul'dan,who is more cunning and ruthless,yet not as iconic as Kil'jaeden.

Now,if we look back at it,I have a feeling,that Legion could have been more epic - come on,we took a fight against the Burning Legion itself! Before,if you would hear the word "Burning Legion",you would imagine Sargeras and his most trusted lieutenants - Kil'jaeden and Archimonde. Archimonde died like a crap in the end of other expansion,Kil'jaeden appeared in the middle of expansion without much involvement and died few momens later and Sargeras jumped out of the cloud only to stab Azeroth and be imprisoned moments later.

I think,that this and the crappy story we have in Battle for Azeroth,proves that Blizzard sold itself to Activision long ago. They had a good,interesting,logically written story up until the moment Activision took over and started to turn it into a crap,deleting a fine written text and replacing it with nonsensical bullshit. It's as if a house owner sells a beautiful,clean house to a people,who in a year turn it into a dump.

[Toxuvox]

Blizzard writers are still Blizzard writers regardless of Activsion. As such, they are as prone to hit and miss as any other video game story writing team. There's no "Acivision is pushing shit narrative" angle here.

[Amaterasu65]

KJ was also depicted a little guilty for betraying his world and race while not achieving the sought results. He seemed as if he understood his decision was the wrong one since all his plans proved fruitless. Also Velen's more dynamic presence during ToS probably made him even more sad. I kinda feel he regretted his path because he could still be with Velen and that his main motive to keep on was to see his bestie destroyed so he can eradicate his hesitancy and conflicting emotions. I definitely did not see the Deceiver during his spotlight patch.

[Stevano]

I'd say wasted potential. Legion had massive lore moments, unfortunately they weren't build up at all. We burned through every major villain that expansion had to offer in a record time. Kil'jaeden was no difference. He truelly was a macnificent lore character and proved to be an extrodinary villain throughout Warcraft's story. Yet they threw him into a raid where he would show up only a brieve moment before the Avatar of Sargeras. Blizzard just skipped an opportunity of fine story just to get as soon as possible to Argus, which deserved much more than only a patch...

[Super Dickmann]

KJ's portrayal was absolutely bizzare. He got shunted off to a mid-patch while barely doing anything and was cast as some kind of reluctant figure sad about losing Argus. We were expected to see it as a poignant moment when he died, despite this guy being the engineer behind the beginning of the games, who's wiped out tons of species and most recently spent 25k years torturing and manipulating Velen's son, not to kill him, mind, but just to wrench the knife further in when those millennia passed. Making him a figure who's redeemed in some fashion, even if it just acceptance of Velen or mourning for his world is out of place.

Gul'dan on the other hand I was very happy with. Great Voice-acting, great story in the Tomb of Sargeras prelude bit. Damn shame he got so little screen time in the game itself. Kind of a trend with Legion villains. Must be why by Argus we'd exhausted the entire roster.

[DemonHunter18]

everything post Nighthold was meh, especially a lead up to ToS.

oh and Argus...

the main planet homeland of the Legion which should be flooded with demons but noooooooooooooooo we have refugees there who survived for 20,000 years without anyone noticing them.

[Soluna]

I've been going over the Legion story in my mind,rethinking what could be done otherwise and got to conclusion,that Legion wasted a major character. Some say,that the point of Warlords of Draenor expansion was to bring back Gul'dan. Gul'dan was the main villain in the Warlords of Draenor and the Legion until his demise in the Nighthold. Only after that, Kil'jaeden makes his appearance, in a short cutscene and later we meet him in the Tomb of Sargeras.

Now,I have a question - why the hell did we need a Gul'dan,who was Kil'jaeden's puppet,if Kil'jaeden could've gotten way more screen time and be the main jerk instead of alternative universe Gul'dan? Come on,it was Kil'jaeden,the master schemer,the jerk,who is blamed for destruction of many worlds and who destroyed entire races. Couldn't he be the one who actually creates a plan to invade the Azeroth? No,instead we wasted another major character - Archimonde,so that he could send an alternative,improved version of Gul'dan,who is more cunning and ruthless,yet not as iconic as Kil'jaeden.

Now,if we look back at it,I have a feeling,that Legion could have been more epic - come on,we took a fight against the Burning Legion itself! Before,if you would hear the word "Burning Legion",you would imagine Sargeras and his most trusted lieutenants - Kil'jaeden and Archimonde. Archimonde died like a crap in the end of other expansion,Kil'jaeden appeared in the middle of expansion without much involvement and died few momens later and Sargeras jumped out of the cloud only to stab Azeroth and be imprisoned moments later.

I think,that this and the crappy story we have in Battle for Azeroth,proves that Blizzard sold itself to Activision long ago. They had a good,interesting,logically written story up until the moment Activision took over and started to turn it into a crap,deleting a fine written text and replacing it with nonsensical bullshit. It's as if a house owner sells a beautiful,clean house to a people,who in a year turn it into a dump.

This basically can be summed up as 'Look guys, this is my version of why I think Blizz was sold to activision some time ago'. *Yawns*
Time to find another hater thread. Shouldn't be too hard to find it.

[Fistfighter]

Kil'Jaden was just bad.
Just plain bad.

First of all, he got NO screentime. He was nowhere to be seen, not even schemeing in the backlines, they just put him there, because.. he existed before.

He was SMALL. Compared to his Sunwell model? He was tiny, a tiny little demon commander, not the mastermind behind the whole invasion.

His stupid old man goatee. He looked like a divorced dad trying to keep in touch with his demonic children.

His stupid boss arena. It was a freaking Legion ship we've seen exactly million times before. That was a huge let down.

His fight sucked. He kept running away like a coward. Compared to Sunwwell? When he's burning your ass with his demonic superpowers? Weak.

The way his death was portrayed? They made him so weak, like he was begging for forgivness. Totally not in line with his character.

And compared to WoD's Archimonde? Archimonde was huge, badass and had a miles better boss fight. He even suited the story a lot more.


The last boss of Tomb of Sargeras should have been the Avatar of Sargeras, not some shoehorned cameo character.
Kil'jaden could have been a throwaway boss in Antorus.

[Super Dickmann]

I'd also have ended ToS with us trapped in Argus and KJ escaping.

I'm actually quite happy with Illidan being the one to open the portal, but it needed some cosmetic changes. I.e, change it from "We're going to the Broken Shore because we've cornered the Legion" to "We're going to the Broken Shore as a last ditch effort to close the portal". Ditto, emphasize that while we're fighting on Argus, the Legion is bombing Azeroth from orbit to lend some consequence to Illidan making it an all or nothing struggle. That way you can rejig more zones in Battle for Azeroth and it would make the losses feel real, with the factions having to depend on the azerite to recover and competing over the scarce resources.

[RoKPaNda]

A lot of the things Activision gets blamed end up just being Blizzard doing what Blizzard has always done, and this is no exception. My first Blizzard game was WarCraft 2 and as long as I can remember Blizzard has had bad story writing moments. Just sticking to WoW though, Vanilla had a ton of little stories that didn't go anywhere, and the entire plot of the Burning Crusade expansion was horrible and nonsensical, they later tried to fix this in Legion which is great and all but it doesn't make it any less stupid at the time. The writing in Wrath was pretty poor too. Turning Arthas from being Ner'zhul's errand boy / puppet into having some kind of ability to destroy Ner'zhul with his mind and take credit for everything that Ner'zhul accomplished only to still have massive daddy issues.

Blizzard has had a LOT of really awful story ideas over the years. They're pretty mediocre in that department on average, but when they come up with something great it's great ... until they eventually ruin it.

[Newname1234567890]

A lot of the things Activision gets blamed end up just being Blizzard doing what Blizzard has always done, and this is no exception. My first Blizzard game was WarCraft 2 and as long as I can remember Blizzard has had bad story writing moments. Just sticking to WoW though, Vanilla had a ton of little stories that didn't go anywhere, and the entire plot of the Burning Crusade expansion was horrible and nonsensical, they later tried to fix this in Legion which is great and all but it doesn't make it any less stupid at the time. The writing in Wrath was pretty poor too. Turning Arthas from being Ner'zhul's errand boy / puppet into having some kind of ability to destroy Ner'zhul with his mind and take credit for everything that Ner'zhul accomplished only to still have massive daddy issues.

Blizzard has had a LOT of really awful story ideas over the years. They're pretty mediocre in that department on average, but when they come up with something great it's great ... until they eventually ruin it.

I really never understood why they wrote that Athras 'destroyed' Ner'zhul? Should have left it that they meld into a singular being

[Aleksej89]

I really like how KJ was done in legion (though it can always be better especially in hind sight).
In one cinematic he is even talking to sargaras about how bitter he is with their deal and the results he has to show for it.

Archimonde was like a bond villain, evil for evil sake... he just wanted power and to abuse that power as much as possible.
KJ was shown to be more of a visionary, he desired to see some grand plan realized and to know that the sacrifices were worth it.

In the end cinematic for TOSargeras he says he never believed that Sargeras could be stopped.
So aside from being drawn in by the power that Sarg offered he was also aware enough to know that fully refusing Sarg would be the end of eredar civilization.

[Akka]

Blizzard writers are still Blizzard writers regardless of Activsion. As such, they are as prone to hit and miss as any other video game story writing team. There's no "Acivision is pushing shit narrative" angle here.

Alternate universes, time travel and bringing back characters from the dead are three huge red flags that any writer should stay WELL away unless they are very talented and very sure they won't botch it.
There is no "hit and miss" excuse when you purposely sail toward such reefs.

[Dagoth Ur]

That's how I feel about Legion as a whole tbh. Especially considering how they were portrayed in War3. The whole franchise slowly building up to another coming of Legion, only for them to get bitch slapped on their own planet and Sargeras being imprisoned 5 secs after we finally laid eyes on him. Just sucks since these guys were considered the endgame for more than a decade. "Kingdoms will burn", yeah right.

[DemonHunter18]

That's how I feel about Legion as a whole tbh. Especially considering how they were portrayed in War3. The whole franchise slowly building up to another coming of Legion, only for them to get bitch slapped on their own planet and Sargeras being imprisoned 5 secs after we finally laid eyes on him. Just sucks since these guys were considered the endgame for more than a decade. "Kingdoms will burn", yeah right.

Blizzard is like Bitch please, Void is the Endgame of the Endgame.

[Toxuvox]

Alternate universes, time travel and bringing back characters from the dead are three huge red flags that any writer should stay WELL away unless they are very talented and very sure they won't botch it.
There is no "hit and miss" excuse when you purposely sail toward such reefs.

Hit and Miss is not an excuse here. I make no excuses for people I do not know. The fact here is, the writers obviously felt capable of delivering such a story. It was only when the player base got a hold of it and came to a consensus tat i was considered a miss rather than a hit. That it passed internal scrutiny only shows that those reviewing the story weren't objective enough.

[SirBeef]

A lot of the things Activision gets blamed end up just being Blizzard doing what Blizzard has always done, and this is no exception. My first Blizzard game was WarCraft 2 and as long as I can remember Blizzard has had bad story writing moments. Just sticking to WoW though, Vanilla had a ton of little stories that didn't go anywhere, and the entire plot of the Burning Crusade expansion was horrible and nonsensical, they later tried to fix this in Legion which is great and all but it doesn't make it any less stupid at the time. The writing in Wrath was pretty poor too. Turning Arthas from being Ner'zhul's errand boy / puppet into having some kind of ability to destroy Ner'zhul with his mind and take credit for everything that Ner'zhul accomplished only to still have massive daddy issues.

Blizzard has had a LOT of really awful story ideas over the years. They're pretty mediocre in that department on average, but when they come up with something great it's great ... until they eventually ruin it.

My sentiments exactly. I think most people were pretty young when introduced to their first WC/SC game and might not have known, or still don't, what good writing is. Writing in Blizzard games has never really been good or compelling. There have been some really god bits and some really bad bits, but overall, it's been 20+ years of mediocrity at best.

[Aeula]

Activision has nothing to do with it. Blizzard is spending more money on narrative than ever before. The problem is they're spending that money hiring talentless hacks.

[SirBeef]

Alternate universes, time travel and bringing back characters from the dead are three huge red flags that any writer should stay WELL away unless they are very talented and very sure they won't botch it.
There is no "hit and miss" excuse when you purposely sail toward such reefs.

Yet we had time travel with all the CoT dungeons and people loved those ideas. Even WoD was some convoluted Infinite Dragonflight mess with timelines BS. Don't see why people have an issue with it now?

[Volardelis]

Yet we had time travel with all the CoT dungeons and people loved those ideas. Even WoD was some convoluted Infinite Dragonflight mess with timelines BS. Don't see why people have an issue with it now?

My main problem with WoD from a story perspective is that it was the expansion that brought in the whole "demons are outside of time because twisting nether".

It just raised so many questions about characters that were turned into demons (such as Archimonde and Kil'jaeden). What happens to all their timeline copies? There has to be at least a timeline where Velen goes demon and either Archimonde and / or Kil'jaeden doesn't.

However blizzard brushes these problems under the rug to say "Hey, the Archimonde you fight in HFC is the same one that was killed at the battle for mount hyjal, isn't that epic!"