Deathwing also had a HUGE presence in Azeroth - at least during the beginning of the expac - that no other villain had; going around and killing players instantly, showing up in random quests in low level zones just to remind you that he's an omnipresent force that will fuck you up.
The Jailer has been confined to the Maw for the entirety of the xpac, like most villains who do absolutely nothing until the heroes show up on their doorstep
The jailer has a stupid ass fucking face guard. I can't stand it. What the fuck.
Cool idea for a villain but nowhere near as epic as he could have been.
He's fine. Obviously it's a completely new character so we don't feel too attached to him as opposed to Sylvanas who has a very deep lore already
I mean, it's a bit silly for me to give judgement now, as we'll know a lot more about him in a cinematic that could drop any minute now. That possibly includes visual changes as well.
That said, I think he's quite boring, because he is evil personified. I suppose it's to contrast others in his employ. But the Jailer is completely one-dimensional. I mean, sure. He has justification not to care about anyone, as the only people he had some care about, were the ones to stop him last time.
But, the result is a villain out to dominate, with no emotional connection to anyone and anything. That's been completely dehumanized. And who can blame him. For eons, he's been chained up, with only the souls of the very worst people of the cosmos for company, in a place whose only function seems to be to torture and grind souls into power and materials. Toss an angel into hell, and he'll become the devil sooner or later.
But, I think that's the main problem. This guy is basically WoW Satan 2.0. And he's a downgrade from Sargeras, who also had no real personality to connect with, but at least looked cool, and had shaped the history of the cosmos with his influence. This guy is a nobody with "mysterious evil goals" and a personality that is detached from others.
At this point, if it was revealed that all the people he convinced with his words, were only convinced because he used his power of Domination as he spoke, I think we could all just nod our heads. "Yeah, that makes sense. He's shown no actual charisma, connection, temptation or beneficial intent at all."
I hope some of it can still be salvaged. His end goal could be revealed as interesting. He could change to a cooler appearance. I doubt it though. The main interesting thing he could do at this point, is succeed in his goals. And even that is but a small step. I'm up for being surprised. But at this point I wouldn't be surprised if he is just a fake-out and won't be the villain of the last patch. Which would be the way to explain why he hasn't been made more interesting: No one would really mind the replacement.
Turns out it was all done for noble reasons. He needed it do it all to save 'existence' from an even bigger evil. It's good intentions all the way down.
- - - Updated - - -
The only way to salvage the Jailor is for the Shadowlands to merely be his origin story for further appearances in future expansions. Otherwise he's just a loot pinata and nothing else.
It is too clear that attributing all those evil deeds to him was an afterthought. I cannot get behind a villain that is being built up by pretending he was behind everything all along.
"Remember the Lich King? The Jailer did it!" -> While I may believe this just to accept the overarching development of the plot, I do not fear the Jailer or respect him just because he swooped in and got merit for old stuff.
For example, I saw Arthas being an asshole and killing his beloved ones. I am attached to Arthas because I could emphatize/hate the stuff he did. Now the Jailer comes and says "Actually I am to blame for everything, I am so evil lol"? Not gonna buy it. He never earned that kind of respect from me. Acting all tough like a prancing peacock just makes him look even worse in my eyes
Deathwing beats him in visual design and voice. He is however a walking plot vortex unmatched by any other villain who can end the world at any moment but chooses not to for no reason in favor of torching random zones and only loses throughout the entire span of the expansion. He becomes weaker and weaker as the expansion goes on and only progresses his actual goal when he participates in worst end of expansion boss fight ever conceived. The fact that he used to be a genuinely impressive schemer as @Mehrunes brings up, who was completely worthy of being a proper expansion villain actually takes points away from him in my book because it's a level of character assassination that doesn't get discussed often enough since Deathwing is a more niche character than what happened to say, the TBC cast.
Speaking of the TBC cast, @Kathranis I'm not bothering with them since they were such a mess and TBC barely had an overarching story that could be followed to speak of. Suffice to say Vashj, Illidan and Kael got fucked, KJ got a decent shake. I disagree on Vanilla, since Kel'thuzad, C'thun, Ragnaros, Nefarian, Onyxia etc. were all completely functional at worst.
Dickmann's Law: As a discussion on the Lore forums becomes longer, the probability of the topic derailing to become about Sylvanas approaches 1.
Tinkers will be the next Class confirmed.
I dissagree with this.
A villain imo needs to feel like: hate to like him and I want to know more. For me it's none of the two.. I don't care about hes backround frankly, because hes so bland. If it turns out hes super cool and has an interesting backround I feel that, that is just to late for him. Hes appearance doesn't do anything either for me.
An example for me would be Negan from the walking dead. He did gruesome things as a villain in the show, but people liked him for hes attitude etc, so people hate to like him, but they do. Means more interest in hes back story etc. Altho everyone in the show at that time feared him. Villains who think that they do the right thing (motivation etc) are much more interesting imo.
Last edited by Alanar; 2021-07-05 at 09:13 PM.
I guess you can look at this in that way as well. As for Deathwing being a plot vortex, let's even put aside him not ending the world earlier (or at least fucking off to do so immediately after he summoned Ultraxion). My favorite bit of how the plot contorted itself so that we could win against Deathwing was how Deathwing somehow knew we would be coming for the Focusing Iris even though it's something Kalec came up with on the spot and yet instead of simply yeeting it into the Nether to assure his invulnerability he simply sprang an ineffective trap for us.
This. All the big previous villains had built up without retconning all of the previous stuff.
For example: Sargeras, Arthas, Ner'zhul, Kil'jaeden. Hell, even Deathwing.
All of them had motivations, and a backstory which we experienced, and got us to feel with them, and understand them as characters. Their achievements and status in the story felt earned.
The big bald dude on the other hand was introduced out of the blue, and his ENTIRE personality consists of "IT WAS ME ALL ALONG MUAHAHA"
It makes him feel shoehorned in (which he is, so at least its fitting), and all of "his" achievements unearned.
It doesnt make him more interesting, it just downgrades the previous characters.
The crooked shitposter with no eyes is watching from the endless thread.
From the space that is everywhere and nowhere, the crooked shitposter feasts on memes.
He has no eyes to see, but he dreams of infinite memeing and trolling.
Deathwing's entire involvement in the legendary staff thing is another reason why he's so easy to compare to the Blue Man. It's a place where he's meant to be portrayed as a schemer convincing people to work with him to achieve some nebulous goal. Except A) his scheming is completely unconvincing as to why anyone would believe him and more importantly B) His scheming is completely unnecessary because he can end the world at a whim at any time. The plot bent over backwards with time travel, plot induced stupidity and heaping contrivance upon contrivance to force a series of events where we beat Deathwing and it still fails. He's simultaneously so overpowered and so pants on head retarded that he affects the real world by making his actual fights in gameplay slogs. They couldn't decide if they wanted Smaug or Godzilla and ultimately ended up with nothing. Every Vanilla end boss towers over him.
Also I'm genuinely surprised by the answers on this thread. I assumed people were universally negative regarding the Blue Man and there were only contrarians speaking otherwise. I even meant to do a topic where I put forth to dissect how he could've been done less poorly, but there's some surprisingly moderate takes here.
Last edited by Super Dickmann; 2021-07-05 at 09:31 PM.
Dickmann's Law: As a discussion on the Lore forums becomes longer, the probability of the topic derailing to become about Sylvanas approaches 1.
Tinkers will be the next Class confirmed.
Deathwing at least made the effort of scouring zones with fire
This guy is literally watching us invade his home and he does nothing
This world don't give us nothing. It be our lot to suffer... and our duty to fight back.
Zovaal has no original backstory. Everything is just retconned to him. He has no history of his own.
Think Garrosh without the campaign in northrend, bombing of Theramore and the duel with Cairne and just go "lol this guy is the big bad of the expansion"
Zovaal has no character development. He is one sided moustache twirling villain for the sake of being a villain.
OT blizz should stop doing books and comics about these important moments in the story and tell them in game.