The Jailer: A completely ineffective villain

[tommyhil622]

Issue i have with him is that nothing about him works. He's a shirtless guy with no shoes that looks more like a beggar than a main villain. His name is also almost not sensical. It's generic and again almost makes no sense. He's the "jailer" but he's the one that's jailed...trapped in the maw. Apart from his attire, which i already mentioned, is also very generic looking. Then theirs the runes. Honestly he looks more like a minion of the Lich King than being the "true" master. Also the voice doesn't help. Everything about him is inferior to the lich king, visually, asthetically etc. He comes more of a pretender than the originator.

[GreenJesus]

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.

Yeh probably something like the Arbiter robot functions by using the Jailer's heart (which would explain the hole in his chest). When the jailer got enough power he was able to shut it down or something idk. It's hard to care about a villain when we know barely anything about them. Illidan/Arthas were good villains because we experienced their history in the RTS. Blizzard has had a real problem recently of keeping everything secret about major characters and then when the secret is finally revealed it's done so poorly people are just dissapointed. Blizzard needs to learn that people need to be invested in the characters in the beginning to actually care about the secret reveal a year away.

[Adam Jensen]

NO ONE ESCAPES THE MAW!

Except for all these Azerothian mortals currently running around Oribos . . .

[Sagenod]

Tbf, we did know that the Nathrezim had Frostmourne and the Domination Helm forged "somewhere," but I don't think it was ever really stated where that was until now.

Actually before it was retconned for SL, the Nathrezim forged the two pieces themselves.

[Arrashi]

NO ONE ESCAPES THE MAW!

Except for all these Azerothian mortals currently running around Oribos . . .

Jokes on you he wanted us to escape as part of his 9001 IQ plan.

[Shedaar]

Who cares whether you demm something "threatening", we know we're gonna win always anyway. There's really nothing to discuss here, that is just subective.

That's true

[valax]

He hasn't even done anything yet , give him time we're just now experiencing a glimpse of what he's supposed to do.
Blizz did a piss poor job at hyping the threat, in the trailer we saw him chained like a dog while ingame we're tossed into the maw and he's there being all bossy n'stuff.. Right now the focus is on Sylvanas and his bdsm boy toy Anduinoob

[Kelathos]

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.

I feel it. You are onto something there.

[Aucald]

"Was getting caught part of your plan?"
"Of course"
"Well congratulations, you got yourself caught. Now what's the next step of your master plan? "
"Crashing this afterlife... With no survivors!"

In terms of freeing himself from the Maw. The Maw Walker doesn't overly concern him - he absconded with a number of Azerothian leaders and retained the one he was looking for, who's still imprisoned. His plans in the various Covenant realms to destabilize the Shadowlands continue apace, with Ardenweald still broken by the drought, Bastion in complete disarray fighting his Forsworn proxies, and Maldraxxus consumed by sectarian violence among the Houses. Revendreth has already delivered its spoils directly into his hand, and the defeat and imprisonment of Denathrius matters little considered that goal is also achieved. The calculus will probably change in future patches, of course, but at least for now the Jailer has put together everything he seemingly needs outside of finally suborning Anduin (which he now seems to have the means to do at will).

[Varodoc]

He's a filler villain before the rise of the true villains of the setting, the Void Lords. And it shall be the Ren'dorei to lead the charge against this ancient and ominous evil that has plagued the cosmos since its beginning. The Jailer is just a useless sideshow before the main act commences.

[Gurahk]

Just uhh.. wait until he steals that heart thingy from the arbiter and puts it inside his chest, transforming into the "leaked" jailer model.

[CalamityHeart]

There's a couple main things that I think cause this sort of impression. One is the pacing of the story and the other is the sort of unfolding of the Jailer's own story.

The combination of the way that Blizzard has sort of dragged out the story in little episodes over the course of seven or eight weeks and the lack of actual concrete info about the Jailer himself within those weeks sort of makes him feel like a villain that's not really there. Blizzard hasn't done a lot of showing, but at the same time, they've done very little telling, as well. But the way that they've told the little that they have has a big "Wait For It" vibe, in my opinion. This is a dangerous level of confidence their writing team has in their ability to deliver a solid and satisfying payoff when it comes time for them to actually tell us about the Jailer. To their credit, they have my attention right now, and I'm hoping it does pay off in a way that cements the Jailer as a good villain, but as much as I'm interested in the story, I just can't help but feel that it's being told... recklessly.

[Rozz]

I found the Winter Queen more threatening tbh. Super uncanny valley going on there

[Lei]

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?

This. I always look for faults in myself first. Is it me who doesn't listen? Is it my fault to not care? But usually it turns out it's not (just?) me. for 3 expansions now, but even wod in some capacity the story has been this "wait and see!", and then nothing happens or ends up with more "ssssh, just wait and see!". It's tiring.
We still don't know what Sylv and the jailer wants to do and more importantly: WHY. Yeye, he wants to escape the maw. And then? There's gotta be a paln or something that's important enough for us to care. All other villains have had at least some reason to do stuff.

As someoene in this thread said : at this point in the story we should be "angry" and "up in arms" against the jailer to "stop the big bad thing".
instead, we casually freed Baine, Thrall, Jaina, we sneak up on the Jailer and Sylvanas as they discuss tactics (that scene would have worked better if the player had to sneak up on them with tension and threats not a cinematic showed it). I was like, WHAT? We treat the unescapable Maw as our second homes, going in and out as we wish. And nobody bats an eye. (the game mechanic eye of the jailer is laughable tbh)
When you free Thrall, he is at the exit, the moment you free him he starts to be bossing around "I've had enough of this place, lets get out of here". Tbh how Thrall has been behaving in SLs is terrible and annoying, starting with him throwing his axe to Helyas face then immediately giving us the infamous "get me a weapon but I'll be superpicky" quest. When you get out with Thrall, he wants to talk about the horrors he had to endure and survive in the maw but Jaina casually tells him to stfu. All of these guys should be seriously damaged mentally and physically yet they chill arround in Oribos. I even got suspicious that they are illusions or spies or fakes or were turned. Something's off with them. Anduin in the first cinematic looks more annoyed than scared/tortured, in the second cinematic he is mocking Sylv. How could anyone take these guys seriously with a setup like this?

[Raziel1258]

he dropped baine down from the tower, that alone makes him our good pal, he isnt villain.

[Arrashi]

he dropped baine down from the tower, that alone makes him our good pal, he isnt villain.

And baine survived proving that jailer can't even do one thing right.

[Aresk]

While true, I think you might be confusing the timeline. What you speak of happened pre-WOW, though a similar sequence in the current storyline may be muddying up things. You're describing Frostmourne, but the new Sylvanas video shows Shalamayne.

Me neither. The teleport from Oribos literally drops you in Zovaal's Cauldron.

I could be mistaken, but I was under the impression that the cutscene for turning in fifteen memories was about stealing the pattern for the mourneblade he forged from Shalamayne rather than stealing the pattern for Frostmourne. I don't think there's any evidence for which of the two were being discussed in the cutscene, but based on Jaina's dialogue in the last questline, I figured they were pointing to the former.

[mhdoe]

Cool you have it all figured out before the first patch good job.

[Aresk]

I don’t need to read Jail-boy’s diary, but we’re just stumbling blind here, some mentions of a betrayal, the usual nihilistic plan (But Blizz was never good at more subtle villainous schemes), and for some reason people are lining up to go along with his plans, which is a decent start, at least.

But what have i seen of the Jailer himself? (YMMV, of course, i may have missed a cinematic somewhere): He did the not-very-heroic feat of tossing Baine aside (Not really a big deal, the Tauren in general have been punching bags since “Warcraft III”), he did some grandstanding when i first waddled out of the maw (Not really selling “Inescapable” there), and i saw him bully the runecarver a bit when i got the “15 legendary power”-achievement.

I don’t need Arthas-esque appearances, but some notion why he’s a big deal besides all minor baddies following him would be nice...

There're the cutscenes in the Bolvar questline, but most of what we know of him seem to come from the Maldraxxus leveling questline with the Primus giving us info near the end of the zone. I personally find it kind of refreshing to be treated as insignificant by the villain, after having villains like the Lich King and N'zoth pining for us to join their causes.

(though I'd probably argue that the real motivation for this was that was basically the "compromise" of Arthas and Ner'zhul, since we know Arthas was trying to hold him back. Not that this is much better, mind you)

I never read the Arthas novel, but from what I heard, Arthas basically destroys Ner'zhul's psyche in that, so that when we reach WotLK, only Arthas is left. The recent Bolvar step goes a bit further, suggesting that as soon as the Lich King gives in to the power of the helm, he's completely at the mercy of Zovaal's will.

This. I always look for faults in myself first. Is it me who doesn't listen? Is it my fault to not care? But usually it turns out it's not (just?) me. for 3 expansions now, but even wod in some capacity the story has been this "wait and see!", and then nothing happens or ends up with more "ssssh, just wait and see!". It's tiring.
We still don't know what Sylv and the jailer wants to do and more importantly: WHY. Yeye, he wants to escape the maw. And then? There's gotta be a paln or something that's important enough for us to care. All other villains have had at least some reason to do stuff.

As someoene in this thread said : at this point in the story we should be "angry" and "up in arms" against the jailer to "stop the big bad thing".
instead, we casually freed Baine, Thrall, Jaina, we sneak up on the Jailer and Sylvanas as they discuss tactics (that scene would have worked better if the player had to sneak up on them with tension and threats not a cinematic showed it). I was like, WHAT? We treat the unescapable Maw as our second homes, going in and out as we wish. And nobody bats an eye. (the game mechanic eye of the jailer is laughable tbh)
When you free Thrall, he is at the exit, the moment you free him he starts to be bossing around "I've had enough of this place, lets get out of here". Tbh how Thrall has been behaving in SLs is terrible and annoying, starting with him throwing his axe to Helyas face then immediately giving us the infamous "get me a weapon but I'll be superpicky" quest. When you get out with Thrall, he wants to talk about the horrors he had to endure and survive in the maw but Jaina casually tells him to stfu. All of these guys should be seriously damaged mentally and physically yet they chill arround in Oribos. I even got suspicious that they are illusions or spies or fakes or were turned. Something's off with them. Anduin in the first cinematic looks more annoyed than scared/tortured, in the second cinematic he is mocking Sylv. How could anyone take these guys seriously with a setup like this?

Based on the story, I assume the main motivation to stop him is to save Anduin (not a great sell to Horde players) and to help out all the friends we've made in Shadowlands. We also probably want to make sure he can't casually abduct our racial leaders again. But with the time-gating of the questline being extended to the narrative, they very much are encouraging us to "lay low and gather intel" than trying any head-on assault, and I think that does negatively impact the urgency of the narrative.

[Pandragon]

while we escape his apparently inescapable Maw. [/I]

This part right here invalidates your entire post if you cant even understand that part of the story.