Menacing Jailer

[arandomuser]

i think thebiggest problem with the jailer is peoples expectation
the fact that its morally straightforward, hes big bad and you stop him, which is normal fantasy archetype but for some reason alot of the lore people have been on a "is the jailer actually 5Head secretly the good guy. and blizz writers are just 1 dimensional and go , nah bad guy bad.
also we know nothing about him
why was the sigil taken? why did he rebel? what was the maw before the maw? al lof these would of been cool to explain and add depth and we'll never know because im 99% sure SL was cut short because why were those questions raised if they didnt intend to answer them originally?

[username993720]

having the Jailer just show up in chains without any build up would've been even worse than the cartoon villain we got

We got a build up for that:

But there is something nerve-racking about a chained one. See: King Kong.

Good example.

I would actually like if they did something similiar like with Tai Lung from Kung-Fu Panda. Have the expansion start with the Jailer still in chains, he manages to escape and we get a scenario where we attempt to stop him but he completely recks the place and kills off all guards while also threatening the players that he'll come for everyone who defied him, leaving them as the survivors to tell the tale to others.

Thought of this guy when i made this thread. But, we already had an ecnounter with him that we survived. The first maw experience. And that wasn't well executed.

Agreed, he should have been chained with Sylvanus as the acting protagonist until the end of SOD. SOD should have been set up as a "race." Sylvanus rushing to free the jailer and we try to stop her. She beats us and frees him, he rushes off the Sepulcher and we have the final battle with Sylvanus.

Cool concept.

[Mysterymask]

I dread the idea that they might go for the double reversal was a hero all along and was trying to remake the universe into a ever green paradise free from suffering. That everything he has done to this point was to achieve that end.

..I too have played Persona 5 Royal

[shoc]

He should have brutally murdered Baine, Thrall, Jaina and Bolvar and turned their souls into ash in the opening act of Shadowlands. At least that would have set the stakes. Thrall never gets to meet his mom, that would be heart breaking, Draka would be rightfully pissed the fuck off too. Think about all the Kotaku articles that would have been written about Blizzard pulling a gutsy 'red wedding' moment. Instead we are supposed to hate a villain who hasn't actually done anything to make us fear him.

[Candlewick]

..I too have played Persona 5 Royal

I have not would I enjoy it?

[Mysterymask]

I have not would I enjoy it?

...well probably but the thing of remaking the universe with no suffering is LITERALLY a plot point

[Romanthony]

I think hes more menacing in his concept art honestly and the shadow we saw in the cinematic reveal https://i.redd.it/v8lzo7e01b861.jpg

Rather then what we got

[username993720]

I think hes more menacing in his concept art honestly and the shadow we saw in the cinematic reveal https://i.redd.it/v8lzo7e01b861.jpg

Rather then what we got

Looking like triton?

[Dellis0991]

The orc outhouses in WoD are scary, Zovaal is bland.

[heldok]

There is no way to make any video game character intimidating, unless you're a child, or it's a horror game.

They should've at least gone with his concept art look though, he looked cool there, current jailer looks like ass.

[username993720]

There is no way to make any video game character intimidating, unless you're a child, or it's a horror game.

Awe-inspiring, at least.

[Dejiko]

He`s a textbook saturday morning cartoon villain.
Something like a monster of the week taken right from a scooby doo episode.
Might be somewhat imposing if he did more than just bully Baine and spout vague nonsense.

[Sanguinerd]

Problem with the Jailer is (for me anyway) I just don't give a shit about him despite everything we've been forced to go through (which is another problem with Shadowlands all together) he's a nobody. A threat nobody gives a shit about because nobody knows him. No build up, no meaningful power displays, no proper backstory.. the only thing he's got going for him is badly retconned lore which is just annoying.

The worst thing is Shadowlands actually had potential story-wise but they just lacked the creativity to make it happen. Had the Jailer actually done anything meaningful that made me want to there it would've been another story. Right now I simply do not care about the zones or the Covenants or anything I've done so far. I only went because I had no choice in the matter.

When the sky broke he could've invaded Azeroth, decimated our lands and banished us into the Maw and THEN we find a way to escape and together with the help of the Covenants our goal is to return to Azeroth and take it back.

The ridiculously long wait between patches doesn't help either.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Prior Warcraft villains were menacing because they had been established to be a threat.

• In Warcraft 3, we adventure through the kingdom of Lordaeron with Arthas, and then he razes that nation to the ground. In Vanilla WoW, you adventure through the ruins of the villages and towns he destroyed, which hyped him up.

• Kil'jaeden was menacing in BC because we saw that Illidan was terrified of him in WC3 and in BC.

• Deathwing was menacing because he quite visibly sundered Azeroth, and there was the Twilight Highlands questchain where he fought and defeated Alexstraza, forcing her to be taken away crying as her son sacrificed himself to halt Deathwing's pursuit.

• The Sha were menacing because as we quested through 5.0, we saw how the threat of the Sha has affected the Pandaren's way of life as they reformatted their culture to try to avoid it.

• The Thunder King was menacing because as we quested through 5.0, we constantly heard about what he did and saw evidence of his empire.

• Garrosh was menacing because he had popular support and nuked Theramore.

After MoP, the villains aren't very threatening.

• The Warlords aren't portrayed as very menacing ingame. If you know the lore, then on paper the Iron Horde should be very threatening because the First Horde ravaged Azeroth in the first two games, and the Iron Horde is a more souped up version of that, but ingame you just easily knock them over the course of a few days. Most of the titular Warlords are dead by the end of 6.0.

• By the time of the Legion expansion, the Burning Legion had become overexposed and overstayed their welcome. You've beat them in WC3. You beat them in BC. You beat them at the end of WoD. The War of the Ancients novel has the heroes beating the Legion. You mindlessly kill millions of demons over the course of your world quests. You've already beaten Kil'jaeden before and Archimonde 3 times before (once in WC3, once in the Hyjal raid, and again in Hellfire). You've killed dozens of Pitlords before. Sargeras was only ever teased in lore and only had 20 seconds of screen time before being jailed, and you never fight him. The only vaguely threatening Legion character by this point was Aggramar, for being a freaking titan. That cutscene where he comes down from above and is about to kill you is pretty cool. Sadly ingame he just falls over and dies and is forgotten.

• The Horde in BFA isn't threatening because historically, the Alliance has beaten every single Horde. The First Horde, the Second War Horde, the Dark Horde, Thrall's Horde, the Fel Horde, the True Horde, the Iron Horde... why should I care about this eighth Horde? They're hunter gatherers with delusions of being Ghengis Khan that rely on trucebreaking surprise attacks on civilian settlements while we have fleets of airships with machineguns. Sylvanas was spooky way back when she was plotting and committing horrific human experimentation in the background, but when she was thrust to the forefront she became this uninspiring highschool bully girl who commits mass genocide just to spite a dying elf.

• I've never found the cthulu monsters to be threatening, especially by the time of BFA when you've personally beaten 5 of them (C'thun, a unnamed old god in Outland, Yogg, the 7 Sha in Pandaria, and G'huun).

So the Janitor is just a continuation of WoW's weak villains after MoP. The Jailer has no meaningful feats to his name. We are told that he is the most dangerous baddie ever, but we never feel it.

- - - Updated - - -

Character design is a big factor in how a character is perceived. I personally prefer the announcement depiction of the Jailer.

Do you think the Jailer would have been more intimidating if he was chained for most of the expansion?

Like, i wanted to see him like this:

I suppose there could have been build up if your intro to Shadowlands was the Arbiter showing you the Jailer's prison (maybe in the center of Oribos so you see it regularly), with him chained in the middle, and telling you that he was waking up and the spells are breaking and you need to stop it. And as the expansion progresses, the chains started breaking one by one. And then you have a climatic raid where breaks loose. That would have been more effective at hyping him up.

I know people are clamoring for the Jailer to recreate Azeroth, but that wouldn't really hype him up as a villain if it happens during the last 90% of his tenure as a villain.

- - - Updated - - -

I've really tried to keep riding this wave of SL lore, but I am mostly bummed that Zovaal didn't get more WCIII style Cinematic Screen-time to flesh out his best dialogue and stuff.

It seems like Blizzard has decided that huge marketing pushes aren't worth it anymore. They really went all out with WoD and BFA, but that didn't keep subscriber numbers up.

This thread made me realize that the Jailer went through 4 different visual designs ever since they've announced Shadowlands.

Yeah, at one point he looked like Aman'Thul/Tideborn Shaman from Perfect World International/Ice King from Adventure Time.

Shadowlands needed leaps and bounds more 3D cinematics to even begin to form a cohesive, engaging, satisfying narrative.

If the player satisfaction of WoW's story experience is dependent on having an hour of pre-rendered cutscenes, I think there has been a fundamental misunderstanding on Blizzard's part about what their audience wants.

BFA had like an hour or two of cutscenes, but I didn't really care about any of them. I didn't care about Sadfang and his drama. I cared more about Warbrave Oro getting one shotted in Highmountain.

I would actually like if they did something similiar like with Tai Lung from Kung-Fu Panda. Have the expansion start with the Jailer still in chains, he manages to escape and we get a scenario where we attempt to stop him but he completely recks the place and kills off all guards while also threatening the players that he'll come for everyone who defied him, leaving them as the survivors to tell the tale to others.

My fear of such scenario is that it would once again marginalize the player, which WoW has already been suffering from for the past decade. The player is completely absent from pre-rendered cutscenes and is treated as nonexistant in the lore. Having a raid where you are powerless and the Jailer escapes just like that... I dunno.

The jailer is the type of villain that needs mystery.

Do you trust Blizzard to handle mystery boxes well?

i think thebiggest problem with the jailer is peoples expectation
the fact that its morally straightforward, hes big bad and you stop him, which is normal fantasy archetype but for some reason alot of the lore people have been on a "is the jailer actually 5Head secretly the good guy. and blizz writers are just 1 dimensional and go , nah bad guy bad.

I don't think anyone was earnestly asking for that. They were half expecting him to turn out to be actually good, somehow, in Blizzard's eyes due to Blizzard's infamous tendency to try to "redeem" their villains or give them sympathetic motivations.

There is no way to make any video game character intimidating, unless you're a child, or it's a horror game.

There are plenty of ways to make a video game character feel intimidating.

• Colonel Richard and Chancellor Osborne from the Trails series feel scary because they have popular support they can weaponize against you, and you find out that they secretly control everything and have everyone in their pocket, so there is almost no one else you can turn to for help. Public resistance is very difficult because they're on the villain's side and think you're an usurper who needs to be stopped.

• Nascour from Pokemon Colosseum also felt intimidating for the same reasons as the above.

• Weissman from Trails in the Sky also felt scary because you found out how he had been playing you the entire time and there was little you could do about it.

• Sephiroth felt intimidating because you and your terrorist cell were struggling to fight a powerful megacorporation and got captured... and then this guy swoops in and singlehandedly wipes out corporation for you. You struggle to kill giant snakes in the desert, and that guy casually stakes its head on a giant tree. Cloud constantly gets killed by mobs in battle while Sephiroth annihilates everything.

• Queen Brahne from FF9 felt intimidating because she had several powerful enforcers at her command (Beatrice, Amarant, that barbarian girl, etc), and wielded summoning magicks that destroyed... what? 2 or 3 kingdoms onscreen?

• Sin from FF10 felt powerful because you tried to stop it with your dinky little boat and failed, and saw it annihilate several settlements and entire armies onscreen. 80% of the game is just trying to amass enough power to stop it.

• The Ultima Weapon from FF14 felt powerful because you had spent 80% of the game struggling to fight the Primals... and then the UW swoops in and curbstomps 3 of them in 30 seconds and absorbs their powers and becomes more insanely OP. The Eorzean Alliance are told to surrender or their cities will be destroyed by the Ultima Weapon. In the face of such awesome power, the Alliance leaders seriously consider surrendering. Operation Archon involved three countries mobilizing their entire armies and waging diversionary assaults on a dozen fortresses around the world, just to get you a chance to infiltrate the Praetorium to fight the Ultima Weapon.

• Etc.

[username993720]

I suppose there could have been build up if your intro to Shadowlands was the Arbiter showing you the Jailer's prison (maybe in the center of Oribos so you see it regularly), with him chained in the middle, and telling you that he was waking up and the spells are breaking and you need to stop it. And as the expansion progresses, the chains started breaking one by one. And then you have a climatic raid where breaks loose. That would have been more effective at hyping him up.

I guess it would have been good if you could get a glimpse of him through the Oribos pit of souls.

[Biomega]

The real problem IMO is that the story itself is just a load of tropes. Where other games build up an intricate story that makes you feel and follow along with the plot, Shadowlands can effectively be summarized as "bad guy wants to destroy universe" - it's the ultimate stereotype. We are TOLD this story has been in the making for ages, but we know basically NOTHING about the Jailer. Who he really is, what he really wants, what his motivation is beyond "I'm evil", nothing. Where in other stories you have layered villains with backstories, past traumas, you name it, here you have a figure popping out of nowhere, retconned into having pulled every string imaginable over the past two decades, and with zero character development, motivation, or background. How are you supposed to be intimidated by THAT?

Blizzard effectively just plopped the Jailer in front of us and went "see this? it's scary". But that's not how scary works.

[Stormspark]

The real problem IMO is that the story itself is just a load of tropes. Where other games build up an intricate story that makes you feel and follow along with the plot, Shadowlands can effectively be summarized as "bad guy wants to destroy universe" - it's the ultimate stereotype. We are TOLD this story has been in the making for ages, but we know basically NOTHING about the Jailer. Who he really is, what he really wants, what his motivation is beyond "I'm evil", nothing. Where in other stories you have layered villains with backstories, past traumas, you name it, here you have a figure popping out of nowhere, retconned into having pulled every string imaginable over the past two decades, and with zero character development, motivation, or background. How are you supposed to be intimidated by THAT?

Blizzard effectively just plopped the Jailer in front of us and went "see this? it's scary". But that's not how scary works.

Exactly. The Shadowlands story boils down to "big bald man with nipples is evil". With no thought given to it beyond that. Everything involving Shadowlands has been tell, don't show, and it's terrible. It's not Warcraft.

[Jastall]

Exactly. The Shadowlands story boils down to "big bald man with nipples is evil". With no thought given to it beyond that. Everything involving Shadowlands has been tell, don't show, and it's terrible. It's not Warcraft.

It very much is a Warcraft thing, tho. We're told the Legion are this unstoppable army of demons rampaging across the universe, we're shown a bunch of incompetent doofuses going "mwahahaha you can't stop us mortalssss" as they get farmed for loot and who are only a threat because Argus allows them to respawn quickly and actual powerhouse daddy Sargeras is there to back them up (when he's not getting succed into a prison in his debut cutscene that is).

We're told the Old Gods are insidious and manipulative Cthulu expies, we're shown big squids that lose their shit when we start beating the hell out of them for purples.

We're told the Iron Horde is this militarized band of bloodthirsty Orcs with tanks that we desperately need to stop, we're shown a bunch of useless morons who haven't conquered half of Draenor and who don't even last longer than a patch as a threat before Gul'dan co-ops them.

We're told Deathwing is a conniving, incredibly powerful lava dragon. We're shown yet another inactive villain who sits there taunting us and doing nothing until we ease his back pain and give him a manicure.


WoW's been pretty bad about having good villains to be honest, for the entirety of its runtime. I think AU Gul'dan was likely the best, or least bad, one because they didn't overhype him as the most powerful and long-sighted Titan level threat or whatever, he's just good old Gul'dan doing Gul'dan things. Arthas was okay too but mostly due to WC3 inertia, in Wrath itself he's a cartoonish Saturday morning cartoon reject who keeps popping in and out of quests to taunt us and ends up being less of a threat than a leaderless Scourge, apparently. And they killed Ner'zul to get to this result even.

The Jailer is completely in line with previous main villains, he's just even more overhyped than any before while simultaneously being underdeveloped, likely because the developers are far too much in love with Anduin and especially Sylvanas to give anyone else proper screentime and development.

[Kokolums]

Hes even worse in the next patch because we have to assume he is yet another 3d printed robot god. So were just dealing with a machine yay.

[username993720]

Hes even worse in the next patch because we have to assume he is yet another 3d printed robot god. So were just dealing with a machine yay.

Everyone's a machine, basically, after 9.2.