How would you write the Jailer to be interesting?

[Asrialol]

I like threads like these, since it shows that the same people who constantly complain about "terrible writing" doesn't know shit about writing themselves.

Not saying the writing in the game is stellar. But there are people in these forums that even keep mentioning certain Blizzard writers by name, lol.

[Ivarr]

If you like threads like these then why not provide some insights to people who don't know shit about writing, seems like they could use some.

[Xaviaton]

I honestly don't really think the Jailer require any rewriting to be a perfectly serviceable villain. He is kind of a Sauron character. He is just evil doing evil things. He might be doing evil things particularly much right now because he was banished, but he was banished in the first place for doing evil things so...eh?

I think the main problem is that the Covenant and Korthia (as far as I have progressed myself) campaigns do a terrible job of actually providing us with any form of stakes or investment. The Jailer could be used more sparingly (for example I really do not care about his generic villain speech in the intro scenario) but he doesn't need to tell us about his plans or really care about us - we are mortals after all. I think the main problem is that we have Kyrestia, the Winter Queen and now the Primus but they absolutely refuse to tell us about the history they have with the Jailer. AFAIK we also have gotten no information from Denathrius on why he sided with the Jailer either. The most basic way of telling a story like this is to have us try and figure out what the Jailer's plans are with the help of learning about his past from the covenants (it is not original, but it works fine).

The only reasons I can think of for not doing it is a) to drag out the story over more patches until the Covenants gives us the information at the point where the plot requires it or b) use Sylvanas as the character who helps us figuring out the Jailer's plans so there is a single reason for us not to yeet her off ICC again. Possibly both.

[Candy Cough]

I mean, the problem is really two fold. First, he just appears. No history, no background. But second, it's that we're told that he has a better way. In Spires, Devos emotes that he showed her the truth and that his way convinced her. Sylvanas is shown telling Anduin that the system is unfair and the Jailer has a better way... but neither actually tells us what this is. Face it, if Sylvanas wanted to convince Anduin... why not tell him what she's learned from the Jailer? Why beat around the bush with mere assertions, especially when Anduin has zero reason to trust her?

And, how can people like Sylvanas and Devos really believe The Jailer's way will lead to freedom when he reigns over a hell that enslaves and torments souls for eternity?

"My way leads to freedom and a better life!"

"What about all the souls being enslaved and tormented?"

"Oh, just ignore that..."

Come on. This is crap writing.

To be fair he was imprisoned in the maw against his will

But I have no Idea what could be done to make him Interested. He is basically more powerful than Sargeras at this point so whats he after? I’d Imagine the place he is going to is like the forge of origination, but Universe wide, so if he activates it he kills everyone and makes them serve

Thats kinda the problem introducing a threat stronger than any of the cosmic forces when its far from the finale of the entire story. WoW has absolutely most probably many expansions left

I just think anything that we currently know about the universe is irrelevant when he is that powerful. Hed probably be punching void lords in the face and chaining down titans I dont know. I imagined the original goal was to kill Azeroth to get its world soul

[mysticx]

Yeah becouse Thanos was totally the first bad guy that needed to collect "items" for he´s plans

He's the most well-known one in recent pop culture anyway, it wasn't my metaphor...

[Dejiko]

Turn down the bass in his voice so i could understand what he`s saying would be a good place to start.
Part of the problem could also be that they absolutely rushed through important lore characters like
Azshara and N`Zoth right before the expansion launched.

Stop putting so much backstory into books, put it on the screen to be seen, otherwise you end up
with an adversary like The Jailer.
Who is he? Where did he come from? What does he want? No idea,
last thing i know i was deep in the ocean, then some eldritch horror needed to be struck down with a magical
amulet and now.. A person older than time, with a murderous streak wants to unmake reality.

Yeah..
How about spending the first patch of an expansion learning about what`s to come instead of being thrust into a new place,
with new faces, new problems and new evils.
Just let things breathe for a moment.

[kiramon]

The Jailer? Is that code for SyLvAnAs?

No, but seriously. The Jailer is just a plot device for Sylvanas, that much is clear. I would make him more interesting by giving him some actual f-ing personality, first and foremost. Also, his appearance. I would not make him a dudebro.

Lol, maybe he could be more like Hades from Hercules? That'd be a nice change of pace!

wow only gives personality to Troll characters. He could've been loud and flamboyant and JRPG-End Boss like. lol

[Phala]

i'd say let him win. we are winning too much against those world-ending-threats and everyone is a champion, chosen.. maw walker *yawn*

like seriously - end of the expansion should be everything is lost, us fleeing from shadowlands and barely able to close the rift to our world so that he cannot follow right away.
make us not taking him seriously enough right now part of the story - and the jailer the tool for the big reset the bloated-multi tineline/zone pile wow kinda needs.

and then when we are back to hunting fulborgs, murlocs and whatnot in the next expansion the jailer breaking in our world at some point would actually feel like a looming threat.

[Lord Pebbleton]

I don't think it is possible to make him interesting anymore.

Visually he's very cool, especially with the new armor, but I honestly have no idea what he wants to do. All I know about him is that he is bitter, he behaves like he wants to kill everyone, and that he wants to leave the Maw. I know nothing about his endgame or his motivations, apart from generic destruction of everything.

They should have made a better job at explaining his story. We have characters that know a LOT about him (Winter Queen, Archon, Denathrius, now the Primus) and I don't think we ever asked anything. I don't recall any tidbits of character-defining lore while questing in the Shadowlands. We also have Torghast, which is literally the Jailer's jail, and all it could do was sprout the cringy Buttons MRAAZZ meme. The only lore we get there is about Jaina, Thrall and Anduin.

A villain can also be very flat and still be cool, like Gul'dan; he didn't need any motivation other than "my masters said so", and he still managed to be a badass. But we knew Gul'dan already from Warcraft 3, he wasn't just a random crazy underdog. We knew literally nothing about the Jailer before Shadowlands, and the retcons about him being behind all bad events are so pitiful I don't even want to consider them.

Overall a wasted opportunity. To me, the Jailer cannot be interesting anymore because they were not successful in making me care during the course of the expansion. Even if they crammed a 100% marvelous and beautiful explanation in the last content patch, I still won't care, because it's too late. This is the kind of things that you MUST establish in order to get a character going.

Keeping some info secret for shock value later? Great, ok. Hiding ALL information about a character for months on end? Not cool.

[Sondrelk]

I said before, but I think the biggest misstep was not characterizing him and explaining stuff during the 9.0 covenants questlines.

We don't need to know everything, but we should at least get some tidbits on what he is doing right now. One way I would have done this is have each covenant story explain a facet of his plan. Maybe have the Necrolord storyline explain how he was chained to begin with, the Venthyr explaining how the Arbiter got bluescreened, Kyrian explaining how the Maw functions and Night Fae something else.

You could leave a mystery what made the covenants chain the Jailer, or what he actually is planning, but we need more information to actually ground the Jailer in any sense of reality.
Then once 9.1 comes around you can have the Primus explain what the Jailer wants and why he was imprisoned to begin with.

[Yuli]

Just let him be evil, that would actually break our expectations in a normally morally grey world. I would actually only change one thing: Sylvanas.

Same Motivation: Let death win. Destroy the cycle of life and reality to create a new world that serves him.
Same Power: Let him win in the raid to beat him. Let him leave us alive bc mmo rules. That's okay.
Different Texture: Don't let Sylvanas be the substitute of the player (like she is now!) discussing his morals, because players actually don't wonder that. Also: Don't tease a deep motivation by letting the other Eternal Ones play guess the context with us while being obviously flawed (I'm looking at you, Archon).

That way you would have an evil on an even lower morale ground than the Old Gods which would've been refreshing. Here's one to hope we will see that Zovaal in 9.2

[bloodkin]

I'm going for a prediction, we are going to have to deal with angry blu boi for at least the next expansion, and have to live with a slow and inconsistent trickle of lore/info on him and have to deal with sylvanus forever. I hope I'm wrong, but since blizz's writing went tits up since WoD, I fully believe we are in for a second round of WoD level AU bullshit with a wannabe thanos, slyvanus the saviour and golden boi the martyr.

Utterly loathsome, but it's what I've come to expect.

[HansOlo]

Many people complain that the Jailer is a completely dull and boring villain. And it is true. So how would you fix that? How would you make it even a little interesting?

Personally, I would just make the Jailer right. If all the Covenants (we will not touch on the other endless realms of the Shadowlands) had some kind of huge flaw that makes mortals suffer (we clearly see this in Bastion, mortals are forced to give up their memories and some of them become Forsworn) and which the Jailer would like fix, for which the Eternal Ones (who could not see the righteousness in his words and the imperfection of their own ways) drove him out. After the ages of imprisonment in the Maw, he could become much angrier, but the only thing he would like is to take revenge on the Eternal Ones for unfair exile and correct their Covenants. No desire for absolute power.

The Jailers background and appreance is not interesting - but the role he plays got huge potential.

It would be so damn cool - if after we killed the Jailer, Sylvannas would become the jailer(just like Arthas and the Frostmourne)- in this ironic storytelling.

[Silverware]

For a guy that commands death and domination, he should have been scarier. His execution felt very off, as he was too much generic deep voice buff bad guy in the beginning. I think it would've been more interesting if he was at first chained up like the cinematic or like the Runecarver was. Make him gaunt, mute, and give him a dead unflinching stare. Have Sylvanas communicate with him, but the player would never hear his words - maybe it's all in her head. He would never move or physically react until he gets the last sigil and frees himself and gets his armor back. He's still very powerful and his presence can still be felt everywhere we go, but he should appear to be weak and as far as we can tell little more than a set piece that can simply will into being absolute chaos wherever he wishes. They could even play up Sylvanas more to make it unclear who is actually in charge, the banshee wrecking shit everywhere or the bound skeletal man in the tower.

[olddog]

First, bring back this form.

[Ivarr]

That's the dude who will steal naughty children from their beds in a brothers Grimm tale.

[guisadop]

By default he can't be interesting. The original sin is his existence and the whole context surrounding his appearance in the story, i.e. the fact that this expansion is set in the afterlife.

[Pangalactic]

Pretty easy.

SHOW WHAT HE IS THINKING AND PLANNING.
SHOW WHAT SYLVANAS IS THINKING AND PLANNING
SHOW WHAT EVERY SINGLE OTHER MAIN CHARACTER IS THINKING AND PLANNING

That's the reason why Game of Thrones (at least the earlier seasons) where so damn good - you could see everything, you could see what everyone is planning, and there was no "pretending to be morally grey" because you could see how every single person thought and justified their actions.

In WoW, we have zero idea about why anybody does anything, what they are thinking, what their plans are, what "unmaking reality" is, why the Jaier thinks unmaking reality is a good thing, why he didn't literally wipe everybody out at the end of Sanctum - we know nothing. And it's impossible to care when you have no reason to.

[mickybrighteyes]

I thought it was really annoying how the Primus tells the jailer "I thought casting you into hell would make you a better person!" like what???? in what world does that EVER work out?

Perfect moment to flip the tables. Zovaal looking at the Primus and "Interesting... how did you time treat you, *Runecarver*"

[Soon-TM]

Many people complain that the Jailer is a completely dull and boring villain. And it is true. So how would you fix that? How would you make it even a little interesting?

Personally, I would just make the Jailer right. If all the Covenants (we will not touch on the other endless realms of the Shadowlands) had some kind of huge flaw that makes mortals suffer (we clearly see this in Bastion, mortals are forced to give up their memories and some of them become Forsworn) and which the Jailer would like fix, for which the Eternal Ones (who could not see the righteousness in his words and the imperfection of their own ways) drove him out. After the ages of imprisonment in the Maw, he could become much angrier, but the only thing he would like is to take revenge on the Eternal Ones for unfair exile and correct their Covenants. No desire for absolute power.

Imo the concept of the Jailor might be neat, but since he has never even alluded to in the past, he needs a lot, A LOT of character building. You can't have him be completely wrong, because it would be Random Villain #60369732, and we have plenty of those already. On the other hand, you can't have him be completely right straight out of nowhere, because that would tread dangerously close into Mary Sue territory - and once again, we already have plenty of them. He should have been gradually introduced since at least Legion (or preferrably WotLK) as an antihero of sorts. But the way he is being written so far, he is just a big nothingburger... one of the most boring villains ever made in pop culture.