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  1. #201
    Quote Originally Posted by mysticx View Post
    The problem is that right now we're supposed to be terribly impressed
    I don't think we are. I think we're supposed to know that he's so powerful that he thinks of us as trivial irritants and that he's found a weapon to replace Arthas and Bolvar in Anduin. I think the current goal is more "Hey, this dude is amassing some serious firepower, and that's gonna be a problem shortly down the road, but what is it and why?"

    I've a feeling that ultimately this whole thing is either a bit TOO esoteric, or it's a bit too mundane.

    I think on the "that seems to simple" thread - it's probably a love/revenge story - Zovaal was the original Arbiter, something happened and he fell in love with Elune, which "clouded" his judgement - the Winter Queen condemned him for loving her terrible sister, and Kyresta for failing to be impartial. They banished him, and they exiled Elune from the Shadowlands. Or perhaps - Elune died in the Shadowlands and her essence coalesced in the prime plane - he is searching for a sepulcher after all. It would explain this whole "breaking the machinery of death" thing they've got going on - if Elune cannot stay on the Shadowlands, and Zovaal can't find himself getting to the prime plane, how about smashing the walls and blurring the lines?

    It seems to line up with the things they've set up, and why there's been a lot more focus on Elune over Legion and BFA than the entirety of WoW prior. But it also has a bunch of plotholes?

    Maybe he's just a creeper who saw a pretty moon lady and when he was like "Hey, I want to go say hi to the cute moon" everyone else was like "dude, you're arbiting billions of souls a minute, you don't have time" and he was like "wellll, fuck that. I'm gonna build myself an arbiter to do it!" and ran off and said hi to the cute moon and she was like "Bruh, not interested" and now he's nice guying his way to her.

  2. #202
    Quote Originally Posted by Aleksej89 View Post
    Blizzard as always shits on their entire story telling with the "YOU ARE THE CHAMPION, OH SO UNIQUE AND GIFTED" vomit diarrhea.
    I shat my pants out of sheer frustration when i first approached that ancient maw pillar and out of all the legendary heroes there the pillar reacts to US the player...
    Come on suck our spaghetti even more blizzard, the cheapest story telling that is below even the 12y olds the game is rated for.

    "No one escapes the maw" but we do it in the first 30 minutes of being there... we are able to do it at will, literally spamming it back and forth whenever we feel like it.
    Also whats the point of the jailer "always seeing everything" in the maw if he never does nothing to actually stop us and a single whatever race that trader is can hide us from his sight...

    That whole "time flows differently in this realm so we have been here already forever" is boring tired tripe and just causes more confusion because blizzard does not have consistent or good enough writing to actually make a "time manipulation" story cohesive.

    Actually the expansion line should have been "No one mounts in the maw" because that is actually true AND is a god damn threat to player sanity.
    So far the jailer seems to be there just to give sylvanas someone "more evil" so she can be redeemed and look less evil.
    Someone said jailer is basically the snoke from SWars and god damn its literally snoke, utterly useless and underdeveloped villain.

    The one character story from the maw i am actually interested in seeing is the legendary crafter, despite it probably just being the primus of maldraxxus.
    But the whole sylvanas and jailer duo is the most boring uninspiring WOW villain team i have ever seen.
    Mr. zovaal is so generic and bland that i expected blizzard to actually kill him in the first or second raid and then the REAL boss comes out - someone with actual story writing behind them.
    God damn dude, I laugh my ass off! Also everything is pretty true - "No one mounts in the maw"

  3. #203
    Quote Originally Posted by crusadernero View Post
    Blizzard is better at foreshadowing and leaving us speculating about things, than presenting the actual story.
    Its been like that for years. something new happens that leaves us with more questions than answers and often enough we theorycraft so much around it and create these awesome ideas on whats going to happen.
    Then the story finally unfolds and we are often enough let down by Blizzard WHILE we start speculating on new stuff.
    Blizzard story is at its best when we know next to nothing, given only breadcrumbs for us to find and speculate on.
    For the Jailer though.. He will probably be a letdown as a major villain, cause theres no build up to him and we knew nothing about him before going into SL.
    They all have in common that they are known villains with long buildup before we faced them. The jailer? nothing. Atleast in game
    Actually that reminds me of how i felt about Darksouls 1/2/3 lore.
    It felt interesting and mysterious as long as i did not actually "dig" too deep to find more details and the actual story.

    Because the actual story sucks and most characters don't make any consistent sense if you dispel the mysterious unknown around them...
    Sort of like an island wrapped in foggy mist... looks cool and mysterious but once you approach close enough to see through the fog you realize its god damn pandaria!

  4. #204
    Stood in the Fire Fixxit the Gnome's Avatar
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    To be fair, most villains in WoW have been ineffective. Even the Lich King in WotLK didn't to much more than empty posturing throughout the expansions.
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  5. #205
    Quote Originally Posted by drukai View Post
    I think on the "that seems to simple" thread - it's probably a love/revenge story - Zovaal was the original Arbiter, something happened and he fell in love with Elune, which "clouded" his judgement - the Winter Queen condemned him for loving her terrible sister, and Kyresta for failing to be impartial. They banished him, and they exiled Elune from the Shadowlands. Or perhaps - Elune died in the Shadowlands and her essence coalesced in the prime plane - he is searching for a sepulcher after all. It would explain this whole "breaking the machinery of death" thing they've got going on - if Elune cannot stay on the Shadowlands, and Zovaal can't find himself getting to the prime plane, how about smashing the walls and blurring the lines?
    I'm not aiming at the same theory as you, but I'm on the same boat for the whole thing. It seems Blizz emphasizes way too much the "Jailer is a bad guy who wants to end everything !" madness-nonsense, just in order to hide some twist behind. I'm convinced of that because even Blizzard cannot go that low with such badly written motives for a main villain, and also since the Denathrius cinematic where he clearly says Jailer aims at "reclaiming what was his". He seems to not aim at getting something he never had, he's aiming at getting back something that belonged to him long ago, and that was probably taken from him by the Eternal Ones (or even someone else, who knows).

    This will make him a villain with a bit more backstory and in a sense, probably someone in his rights (just using the wrong tools for that). But at least something you could "get behind" or simply understand.

    It's just a shame Blizz can only write in twists (or tentatives) nowadays. They can't write a consistent story without plot twists which ultimately don't work, because of poor writing, poor PR or datamining.

  6. #206
    Quote Originally Posted by Season2mask View Post
    I put it to you that the Jailer is a completely ineffective villain. I really don't care about him because I don't find him threatening at all. He just seems like a generic, pantomime villain that I had never heard of before he was thrust at us. Who is he? Why should I care? Even now, several weeks into Shadowlands, we have no real backstory for him.

    He just seems incompetenent because the first time we see him he's just monologuing generic lines while we escape his apparently inescapable Maw. Lorewise and gameplay wise we make a mockery of this mysterious villain walking in and out of his domain at will. What were Blizzard thinking?



    ILLIDAN/KJ ->THE LICH KING -> Deathwing -> Garrosh -> Grommash-Archimonde (meh) -> Argus (meh, I guess) -> N'ZOTH

    ...The Jailer?
    The thing about Argus that still made it a cool fight despite he himself being a ???, is that prior to him we got to fight KJ again who has been one of if not THE big bad guy since WC3. Sure Sargeras leads the Burning legion, but KJ was the one we always saw pulling the strings. So fighting him leading up to Argus was really awesome. Then you get to Argus, he's a no name titan but the fact you fight him surrounded by the Pantheon makes it an epic encounter despite not knowing anything about the final boss except he's a world soul the legion has been torturing.

    Then we get to the jailer where yeah, you're right.... he's ??? just a no one... in a place that randomly got created for an expansion and to make him sound big and bad they basically destroyed all their previous lore to make him stand out. But it didn't work

  7. #207
    One of the most boring villains for sure.
    Do you hear the voices too?

  8. #208
    Quote Originally Posted by Aleksej89 View Post
    Actually that reminds me of how i felt about Darksouls 1/2/3 lore.
    It felt interesting and mysterious as long as i did not actually "dig" too deep to find more details and the actual story.

    Because the actual story sucks and most characters don't make any consistent sense if you dispel the mysterious unknown around them...
    Sort of like an island wrapped in foggy mist... looks cool and mysterious but once you approach close enough to see through the fog you realize its god damn pandaria!
    hah yea. Thats often times how the warcraft universe is. On the surface alot of it sounds cool, interesting and mysterious. And as time goes by and Blizzard presents the actual story, we are let down often enough. Blizzard is also VERY obsessed with plot twists to carry the stories. Thats fine, but it gets tiersome and boring when done all the time.

  9. #209
    I feel like the storytelling of WoW exists entirely out of focusing on future stories. Like, all we do right now feels inrelevant, because 60% of everything is leading to some unknown plot in the future without any payoff. If you sacrifice recent storytelling for future storytelling and vague references, atleast make it count (N'zoth been the grand example for this).

    We know nothing of the Jailer, except his real name and some hints of his backstory and plans. We'll finally get to know these plans in the final patch of the expansion when we just don't care anymore. All this 'subvert expecations' have been uninteresting. Sometimes it's good to know what's coming. You can still subert expectations with a clear and detailed storytelling.

    Something the Jailer can't do anything about which makes the game suffer incredibly: the overarching time-gating of the story. I completely understand you don't want players to experience the full story from week one. The way they're doing it now has me COMPLETELY uninterested and uninvested. I don't care about a story if I get detached from it after every 30 minutes for an entire week. This is also one of my biggest critisisms of the game. It's like watching the Lord of the Rings for the first time, watching it for 20 minutes, putting it on pause and continue the next week for another 20 minutes. Does anyone in the world like that? Sincere question.

  10. #210
    I don't think we can say he is inefficent... we don't even know what he is doing.
    It is the same problem like in BfA again.
    There are no resolutions... always just more questions.

    I am one of the people in the forums who likes the story actually. Because i don't get hung up on minimal retcons noone would even see without a wiki.
    BUT dripfeeding us mainstory while shitting on us with useless sideinfos... i don't know... the whole covenant story. Nice and all... but so inconsequential...

    I get you can't use the villain to his full extend in the first patch but come on... something... give us anything... this is so boring right now. Ther could be coming the best reveal out of all of warcraft but in the end i would not care anymore because all the villians decided to take it one step at a time. Next patch will be something that has nothing to do with the current story and the last patch we will kill the jailor and i am sure i will be fine with all of it... but why so... detachted. The jailor doesn't even seem to be involved in anything. He is doing something. But what exactly? Loosing prisoner? Not killing anyone. Really, did he kill ANYONE? It is Sylvannas mysterious bullshit all over again. I liked where the story was going... in the end... but it is just frustraiting to get much to do but nothing substantial.

  11. #211
    Quote Originally Posted by slime View Post
    It seems to me everything that's happening is because he wants it that way, right down to us escaping the inescapable Maw.
    It has to be.. it is an obvious trope blizz used many times but otherwise it literally makes no sense and a literal child could write a better plot.

    - Why does the jailor doesn't block/protect the only exit from the maw that he personally saw us use?
    - Does he never visit the runecarver since we arrived in SL to see that one his chains are broken?
    - Where the fuck is he the whole time we are running mayhem in the maw and the tower? The first time we entered maw he found us almost immediately. He has freaking flying sentries swarming the maw to easily locate us.
    - Why is he not ripping SL apart since we saw that his troops can freely enter and leave other realms?
    - If the mawsworn can easily enter maldraxxus and yeet KT out, why doesn't he do the same for remornia? Or why doesn't he snatch random people constantly to cause chaos and throw everyone into tower?

    Overall, it seems that jailor's plan is not what we think and it revolves around actually making us release the runecarver and anduin is just a distraction. At least I hope for the sake of these writers..


    Also, for the love of god, can someone explain to me why he is called the jailor and not "the prisoner" or "the banished" - When a prisoner takes over the prison we don't say ok you are the wardens now..

  12. #212
    Part of the issue is that before, he didn't exist. For a few expansions now, they have written IOUs for Sylvanas' motivations, and with the stunts, she pulled in BfA, the players needed to cash in those IOUs, or the memes would kill the game.

  13. #213
    Ill be honest wow only 2 two effective villains to me. Death wing and Garrosh (Not in warlord). Basicly the problem with wow is they make up godlike characters that do nothing, never wins anything, has no effect on anything, die in vain like pieces of shit. Death wing was just a corrupted god, but he did sunder the entire world, then stayed in his cave. The problem is all the bad stuff he spawned and the people that wants him to destroy the world. Then you need the help of the other dragons to use up their power to defeat him. Hes effective because his effect took place and hes not a person. Garrosh is the flip side of that, hes a person you saw progress into being the leader of one faction. You saw his effect on the world multiple times, in multiple expansions. Because he was just a person, he was defeated as such. This is what wow should have been like, more defeating people that do stuff over time. The problem with wow is how they setup that they HAVE to have you beat one villain per expac. You dont need to tell a story like that and thats why it kinda sucks.

    Thats part of why people say ff14 handle its story better. It takes its main story on a smaller scale. There are things that are threat and dont just vanish in a year, like the real world. Your kingdoms are at war with the empire for years. Theres no expansion where you just walk over to the biggest kingdom and kill the emperor and wash your hand and probably never will be. There are godlike figure, but they can never be outright defeated as to not make them pure jokes. Whats the point of being godlike if 24/8 people can just show up and beat you with sticks and defeat you permanently. And even when one does get defeated in some way, theres more effect to their defeat then just, alright lets go kill the Next god.

    Thats the problem in wow, too many villain, killed too fast. Also them dying is often of little permanent consequences to the world or the story. You just move on to the next victory. Long term its just not effective, you run out of villains to hate, you run out of ideas, they can only be a joke, you killed a giant god flying in space. Why should you be scared of ANYTHING? If most of the threat you faced where garrosh level and then godlike once in a while to beat on to save the world with dire consequences, that would be more engaging long term, but nah wow is all about slaying more pathetic godlike being one another another and thats the problem. You should have been killing 10 garrosh for every 1 god. Instead you are killing 1 garrosh for every 5 god.
    Last edited by minteK917; 2021-01-12 at 12:19 PM.

  14. #214
    Quote Originally Posted by faithbane View Post
    Also, for the love of god, can someone explain to me why he is called the jailor and not "the prisoner" or "the banished" - When a prisoner takes over the prison we don't say ok you are the wardens now..
    Probably part of his backstory. Maybe he was the jailer of something before, but then X happened, so the Eternal Ones had to jail him there. Jailer became prisoner but he kept his title for some reason.
    At least Denathrius calls him "The Banished One".

    Quote Originally Posted by Stevano View Post
    Something the Jailer can't do anything about which makes the game suffer incredibly: the overarching time-gating of the story. I completely understand you don't want players to experience the full story from week one. The way they're doing it now has me COMPLETELY uninterested and uninvested. I don't care about a story if I get detached from it after every 30 minutes for an entire week. This is also one of my biggest critisisms of the game. It's like watching the Lord of the Rings for the first time, watching it for 20 minutes, putting it on pause and continue the next week for another 20 minutes. Does anyone in the world like that? Sincere question.
    That's it. That's what made the War of Thorns so lame at the time. 10 minutes of questing and... see you next week huh ? No way you can feel involved in a story like that.
    In fact I also slugged through Suramar storylines... Until the point where they removed the timegates. Damn the whole story felt hella different because you could actually invest and understand what's happening there.

    Timegating sucks for gameplay, but they definitely kill any storyline narration.

  15. #215
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    There's nothing wrong with introducing new characters, and the concept and backstory of the Jailer is fine, but the way he is written is so fucking awful.

    - He's a literal fucking God. Yet he does the whole moustache twirling rubbish and makes snippy generic comments like every WoW villain ever. He has absolutely no personality whatsoever beyond "generic bad guy #1010805. He should be a spooky presence in the background that doesn't speak, ever, that influences the plot and manipulates us from afar and makes us dread going up against such a malicious being of such cosmic power.

    - His realm is inescapable. We immediately dumbfound him, a literal fucking God, by escaping and then spend the rest of the patch diving in and out of his inescapable realm daily to farm Stygia and to wreck his impenetrable tower of damnation every week for Soul Ash.

    - He apparently tortures people and breaks them down into nothing, and we literally never see it. Okay there are some souls tied up here and there. Okay he has some scary looking architecture and his minions are sPiKy. But literally all the horrors of the Maw and Torghast and the Jailer are just talked about. We never actually see them take place. Idgaf what in Torghast gave Baine and Jaine and Thrall PTSD, because we never fucking see it. We just hear vague conjecture and "oh yeah, it was bad lol." How am I meant to sympathise about them and care about vengeance when it's never shown what I'm sympathising and wanting vengeance for???

    - By the end of 9.0, we've won, outside the Maw. The literal fucking God is not playin 9D chess, he is just incompetent. Literally over in less than a month.

    He's part of the Pantheon of Death. He is on par with a Titan. For him to be presented as an incompetent, moustache-twirling incel while simultaneously trying to have the plot hinge around him being an evil mastermind that's threatening the sanctity of the universe is just, unreconcilable and unbelievably poor writing.

    And that's not even getting into the retcons they did to Sylvanas to tie her into his plot and make this garbage story 'work', supposedly.

  16. #216
    Quote Originally Posted by Fixxit the Gnome View Post
    To be fair, most villains in WoW have been ineffective. Even the Lich King in WotLK didn't to much more than empty posturing throughout the expansions.
    What was unique about the Lich King was that he was "present" a lot more when you compare it to villains in other expansions (even though he also didn't impact the player a lot, except by being a raid endboss of course). He was present in a lot of dungeons in in-game cutscenes, and also during questing sometimes (in addition to the usual cinematics). This is something that was done well IMHO to make him as the main villain very visible throughout the expansion. In pretty much all other expansions, this wasn't the case. And that means you only see the guy in cinematics and when you finallly face him in the raid. Never in-between. It's like he's not there at all until the raid where he's in opens.
    Last edited by TaurenNinja; 2021-01-12 at 12:20 PM.

  17. #217
    I find it really telling that the jailers visual design is as bland as his character and his presence in the story.
    If he had some great look i could say "blizz sure invested a lot of time making that character look good so they will be reusing him a lot in the coming years and developing him".
    Look at sylvanas - she got a brand new look and in the last 2 cutscenes her facial animations are BY FAR the most advanced in WoW... blizz plans on using and reusing her A LOT in the coming expansions.

    But zovaal looks so basic and boring that you could easily mistake him for a lame dungeon boss or even just a named elite.
    The ONLY reason why we know zovaal is the main boss and not someone like Denathrius is because blizzard told us.
    Otherwise the jailers visual design, his character design and his so far involvement in the story is barely worth being a dungeon trash boss.

    Blizzard dropped the standards A LOT in the past years but one thing they usually did well was the visual appearance of their villains and their names.
    But this lame looking jailer... and he is named "zovaal" like some cheap toilet paper... its the "out of season april fools joke" all over again.
    Last edited by Aleksej89; 2021-01-12 at 01:29 PM.

  18. #218
    The Unstoppable Force Gaidax's Avatar
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    He's practically WoTLK Lich King. Just that one was carried by W3.

    All the same hurr durr master plan and same empty threats, though last one is usual.

  19. #219
    Quote Originally Posted by JavelinJoe View Post
    Literally you need 2 brain cells to read
    Maybe you are missing one? Like, this is posted on page 12, my reply was, as you mentioned, the third. You're not only 5 days late to the party, if you had bothered to read beyond the first 5 posts, you would have noticed that plenty of people have said pretty much the same thing you just wasted a lot of energy on. Wasted, truly. Because I did actually reply to the topic with something meaningful.

  20. #220
    The Jailer exists only so Sylvanas can overthrow him and be lauded for it. Of course they're not gonna develop him.

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