Is Vol'jin's story a waste of time?

[Syegfryed]

Vol'jin should play a bigger role in the expansion. The utter disrespect Blizzard has for trolls is shameful. Trolls deserve better then what they got.

the trolls, the darkpear, should have played a bigger role in BfA as well, but since they wanted to put a dead elf a leader, we completely missed their interaction with zandalari

we only got minimal shenanigans between Talanji and Rokhan. Lore is pretty much fucked without a reboot, but they ego is too big

[Grazrug]

Rastakhan shouldn't have died. Kael'thas shouldn't have died. Vol'jin shouldn't have died.

ALL old Horde leaders should still lead their races. The Walmart trash we are forced to deal with now is just a shame. I wish all current Horde leaders would be killed off so we can have a fresh start.

[Gurahk]

I completely forgot about Vol'Jin

[Kyphael]

Vol'jin himself was a waste of time. Zul'jin is the only troll that matters.

[Feanoro]

It's a crying shame that the writers' tiny dick ego struggles over Thrall, Garrosh, and the Lich Queen turned Vol'jin into Warchief Placeholder.

[Mehrunes]

If you don't choose Night Fae, Vol'jin is completely missing from Shadowlands

That's fucking bonkers

True dat. They shouldn't have included him in the Night Fae storyline either. And that's whether you like him or not. If anything, even more so if you like him, because the best thing to happen to a character in modern WoW is not to appear in it at all, because that's the only way for them to avoid the lore rape that's bound to happen otherwise.

[username993720]

Vol'jin himself was a waste of time. Zul'jin is the only troll that matters.

Know a more iconic Shadow Hunter (besides Rokhan)?

[Arrashi]

Vol'jin was always a waste of time. In the end his character is perfectly summarised by his most famous line - "H-h-h-heeeeeeeelp"

[Niwes]

Was just thinking about how long it's been taking to reach the culmination of Vol'jin's story.


From becoming warchief, dying after the Broken Shore, and almost 2 full expansions of "what's eating Vol'jin's ghost?" we still haven't reached the end.


And I can't help but think that it won't really matter how it ends. I don't think the culmination of his story will be significant at all to the big picture. I feel as if it's been thrown to the side (like a lot of cut content/forgotten storylines) and even though we're at the next step of him being reborn in Ardenweald as a loa... why should it matter at this point?


This isn't a thread for musing on Vol'jin supposedly deserving a better story arc, but just pointing out how his "side story" has ran parallel with BfA and Shadowlands, and it still hasn't really made any difference.

tbh you can, imo, replace Voljin with X, and then replace X with nearly every second character, that once was somewhere between semi cool and very cool, for the last 5-6 years.

Blizzard somehow managed it, to not only recycle their old, great, famous characters to death (instead of creating great, new, famous characters), to max milk their cow. no. they also managed it, while recycling them, to trivialize and kill nearly every second prominent character, in some horrible bad shit stories, until they (the characters) ended up in complete meaninglessness (is this an existing english word?).

in short:

- voljin is dead
- lore is dead
- wow (storywise) is dead
- and soon Blizz is maybe dead too

[Skildar]

I've enjoyed Stackpole's work on Voljin's character and it's too bad that it only came out in a book because having this guy as leader of the rebllion didn't make sense without the character development.

Only thing you get in game is Voljin's tactil leadership of sending waves of troll against a explosives armed mechanical spider (Moira doesn't do better a few doors later)...

This was a waste, for sure...

But then they do it right, they use Voljin as a foreshadowing tool and to legitimate Talanji's different view on the world. She's the daughter of the last Zandalari king that felt his people are at the top of the troll pyramide. Her relationship with Voljin and her almost admiration of him is set in a proper way for her reign to be different from her father's and understandable.

Though just like Sylvanas, they've ruined the pacing since Legion for these two characters.

[Aucald]

Only thing you get in game is Voljin's tactil leadership of sending waves of troll against a explosives armed mechanical spider (Moira doesn't do better a few doors later)...

Eh, there's a lot of game vs. lore set-piece stuff you sort of have to accept when it comes to these things. The whole wave of trolls vs. the Iron Juggernaut is more a set-piece meant to establish the boss as an in-game threat, and not really an indictment of Vol'jin's leadership. It's a kind of visual video game thing that's not meant to be part and parcel of serious lore. But in context, it's meant to show that the Horde rebel forces have basically been blocked by the True Horde's robot monstrosity for some time and it's down the PC raid to tip the scales to break the defence of Orgrimmar's gates.

[VinceVega]

Was bit boring the story... and honestly quite unnecesary. Could have just said voljin chose her just cause...

No diffrence. There was no big conspiracy or anything. Just muazhala visiting him and saying: "You see that banshee over there? She would make a good warchief."
Done. There wasn't even an alternative. None of the other leaders had the gravitas to do it.

[Hctaz]

They do a really bad job at pacing and they give the appearance they're building up to something and it either A) never comes or B) isn't worth the suspense or C) takes so long by the time they deliver it you've stopped caring.

A - Vol'jin
B - N'Zoth
C - Sylvanas

Honestly get the feeling like Metzen had a story planned out for the next several expansion and, when he left, the writing team just decided to scrap it all and do something new. I also feel like whatever it was that they wanted to do, they didn't fully write and plan it out before they started to implement bits and pieces of it.

Which is why:

Vol'jin being warchief went nowhere and was canned rather quickly. I don't know how much of Legion Metzen wrote if any, but he probably came up with the basic groundwork of the story.
My guess is that he decided to write off Vol'jin and replace him with Sylvanas as part of the story he told that ultimately led him to wanting to change Sylvanas' armor as well. The story about his daughter asking something about female characters in WoW or maybe Sylvanas directly. I don't remember the entire story. But he clearly felt some kind of internal struggle as a result, and it's possible he wanted to show a strong female leader for the Horde.

Varian was probably killed off because Metzen still voiced him and like... they could get him to come back as a cameo for Thrall but they probably couldn't have a legit main faction leader being voiced by somebody who wouldn't be doing voice acting full time. At least not for a while.

I'm guessing he probably wrote the framework for Legion leading into N'zoth.

His quote related to the direction they took Sylvanas' character implies that he was surprised with this route. That indicates to me that any of the lore surrounding Sylvanas and the Jailer was invented after he had left. Vol'jin making Sylvanas the war chief was probably originally written as him choosing to make her warchief, not anything nefarious. Her initial reaction of utter shock and disbelief was probably genuine at first until they started coming up with the idea to make her into the villain.

It's also clear that they hadn't fully fleshed out what her plan was during the dev of BfA since she's quoted in the BfA companion book as cursing Vol'jin for making her warchief so that she could no longer work on her plan in the shadows like she was intending.
There's also the whole "deal with Helya" that was scrapped/retconned/plotholed as well. Helya ended up being in league with the Jailer in some form, no? So if Sylvanas had been working with the same dude since throwing herself off the top of ICC after Wrath, why would she need to make a deal with Helya? They would have already been working for the same guy at this point, wouldn't they?

So really I think the sum of every writing issue from Legion-Shadowlands with Vol'jin, N'zoth, and Sylvanas is probably the result of Metzen writing the beginning part of Legion with the expectation that the next expansion would be about the Old Gods in some way, leaving, and then the new lore team changing directions multiple times and not fully fleshing out their ideas before starting to implement them.

[Skildar]

I'm completely exaggerating out of frustration of the lack of emphasis put on why he's the one to lead.

If we stick to what the game show us, Voljin is worthy of this because he's a faction leader who got betrayed/stabbed and felt that Garrosh hasn't been up to the task ever since the start of the Cataclysm.

Talking about scenario and setup mechanic makes me think of Aysa and Ji's story that didn't get a chance to take off during the BfA when it was a perfect time to give the pandaren some focus on what their role could be in this global conflict and the how these two could continue leading opposite clans while not letting go of each other. (Though this is quickly getting off topic ^^)

[ro9ue]

His quote related to the direction they took Sylvanas' character implies that he was surprised with this route. That indicates to me that any of the lore surrounding Sylvanas and the Jailer was invented after he had left. Vol'jin making Sylvanas the war chief was probably originally written as him choosing to make her warchief, not anything nefarious. Her initial reaction of utter shock and disbelief was probably genuine at first until they started coming up with the idea to make her into the villain.

Where did you see this? Curious to check it out.

[nnelson54]

OT: I forgot he even had a story... guess there was somethign to dow ith Mueh'zala?

He was part of the Ardenweald story. They've basically screamed, "HEY EVERYONE VOL'JIN IS GOING TO BE THE NEW LOA OF KINGS!" without actually physically finishing the story and just leaving it hanging.

[Darknessvamp]

To be frank Vol'jin's story concluded in MoP with him becoming Warchief. He survived an assassination, successfully organised a rebellion and then got to sit in the spiky throne and Blizzard felt that was the peak and end of his story especially with how absent he is was in WoD with Thrall once again being thrust into the limelight once more and Legion killing him off before any Horde player could even have a chance to ask him what he had been up to. At this point all we've been following is the noncommittal and 'foreshadowing' side story of a phantasm in the shape of Vol'jin that has little bearing on events other than acting as vague exposition and misdirection while lacking promise of any kind for an effectual interesting or contributive payoff to the game's world or story.

So in other words, yeah pretty much.

[Hctaz]

Where did you see this? Curious to check it out.

Trying to find the quote. I think it was an old tweet that was sorta taken out of context.
He wasn't surprised in a bad way, he was just surprised. It was something related to the BfA story.

I did double check and found an interview where he stated the last thing he worked on at Blizzard was the BfA opening cinematic. But I don't know to what extent.

[Syegfryed]

Vol'jin being warchief went nowhere and was canned rather quickly. I don't know how much of Legion Metzen wrote if any, but he probably came up with the basic groundwork of the story. .

vol'jin was also not supposed to die, but go MIA, as we saw in the eary, beta, to "find new allies, hinting at some sort of zandalari thing to fight the legion or maybe hinting the new expansion in zandalar.

They of course scrap that and killed him like Varian, so i assume its where he lost the reigns and people start fucking up things on the fly like you said.

[TickTickTick]

I mean, the only point of having Vol'jin as the Warchief was for him to make Sylvanas the Warchief so that she can use Horde to push her goals freely. After all, you can't argue with "mysterious spirits whispering a name".

In the end, Vol'jin was the filler Warchief in the filler expansion.