New Villain Appreciation thread

[username993720]

They look like cartoon villains. I don't know how anyone is impressed by them.

Garrosh, on the other hand, was a great villain.

[Pheraz]

On the jailor... the jailor was not intimidating for several reasons plus ideas:

- muscles are not intimidating for humans (see: stone age humans vs mammoths)
- utilizing the head with chains as hairs would have given the character an inhuman look, also humans fear snakes
- not talking at all is more intimidating than talking like an idiot. being stupid is quite the opposite of being intimidating

On the incarnates:

- the human forms are top notch, 10/10
- sadly the whole DRAGON islands seem to be built around the human forms of dragons, which is kinda weird
- if the land was frozen in time, and if dragons lived there, why does the whole island look like dragon-elf island?
- so it would be cooler if the world designers would have thought more about this and utilize the massive forms of dragons, especially of primal dragons, into the world. More dragon caves. More. Everywhere. "Oh shit I ran into a dragon cave". Dragons remind humans of giant snakes. Reptiles. Starring at the (beautiful) landscape in dragon islands is very relaxing, but I never ever have any feeling of danger when I am there. Which is incredibly weird

[Ginnung]

On the jailor... the jailor was not intimidating for several reasons plus ideas:

- muscles are not intimidating for humans (see: stone age humans vs mammoths)
- utilizing the head with chains as hairs would have given the character an inhuman look, also humans fear snakes
- not talking at all is more intimidating than talking like an idiot. being stupid is quite the opposite of being intimidating

On the incarnates:

- the human forms are top notch, 10/10
- sadly the whole DRAGON islands seem to be built around the human forms of dragons, which is kinda weird
- if the land was frozen in time, and if dragons lived there, why does the whole island look like dragon-elf island?
- so it would be cooler if the world designers would have thought more about this and utilize the massive forms of dragons, especially of primal dragons, into the world. More dragon caves. More. Everywhere. "Oh shit I ran into a dragon cave". Dragons remind humans of giant snakes. Reptiles. Starring at the (beautiful) landscape in dragon islands is very relaxing, but I never ever have any feeling of danger when I am there. Which is incredibly weird

I am honestly a bit surprised WoW doesn't get more criticism for the dragons basically having a human form just so they can be '' hot dragons '' ( because people are very whiny about hot characters, particularly when it's female characters ).
To me it does make them a bit bland and less mystical, the reason why I love the dragons so much in FFXIV is because they're so different than other races.
They're not just humans that transform into dragons, they have a totally different incomprehensible to humans telepathic language.
It's like people can only understand them if they choose to make other races understand.
They also don't look like generic dragons, they have some more Medieval and Eastern influences rather than modern fantasy with more snake-like bodies and more wings and their power lying within their eyes is just an interesting fantasy twist.
In other words, they feel like ancient mystical beings called dragons and not like '' Twilight dragons '' that look and feel like they're designed to be '' stanned '' or are like from a cheesy romance novel.

That's the one thing I'll give the ones at least as a positive.
I still do think that they kinda just act indistinguishable from '' human villains '', but at least they don't look as human.
WoW is kinda infamous for the '' shirtless bald man villain '', at least they're not a bald shirtless man who turns into a generic dragon rofl.
At least they look otherwordly.
Imo I actually do think that the stone guy passes for '' cool '' on a visual level too, he's by far the best designed one out of them imo.

[loras]

Listen I know this is MMO champion and most of the people here resent the game or haven't played in years, but for real.

WoW has never been the groundbreaking narrative game for the genre like its competitors have been. And Shadowlands was criticized heavily for such an incredibly boring & generic villain in the Jailer.

Which makes me appreciate the primal incarnates and their visages all that much more. Their character designs look great and they already have more personality as a group than any other major villain I can think of after Arthas.

Iridikron himself may be the more traditional serious strong man villain type and would be boring by himself - but he's got ice lady with the cold demeanor, and the more unhinged impatient dude ready to blaze things up.

I've been enjoying Dragonflight for the shift away from borrowed power in general, its been a good expansion gameplay wise and personally I'll be able to settle for solid gameplay at expense to temporary settings that I might not vibe with... but I admit that the introduction of these characters took me by pleasant surprise. I hope I'm not alone in feeling this way and hope that providing positive feedback, we can help encourage more intriguing character designs.

Each of them beats Raszageth the dragochicken at the very least, and even dragochicken beats Contrivanas and the Janitor by the grace of not being pretentious.

[RobertMugabe]

Listen I know this is MMO champion and most of the people here resent the game or haven't played in years, but for real.

WoW has never been the groundbreaking narrative game for the genre like its competitors have been. And Shadowlands was criticized heavily for such an incredibly boring & generic villain in the Jailer.

Which makes me appreciate the primal incarnates and their visages all that much more. Their character designs look great and they already have more personality as a group than any other major villain I can think of after Arthas.

Iridikron himself may be the more traditional serious strong man villain type and would be boring by himself - but he's got ice lady with the cold demeanor, and the more unhinged impatient dude ready to blaze things up.

I've been enjoying Dragonflight for the shift away from borrowed power in general, its been a good expansion gameplay wise and personally I'll be able to settle for solid gameplay at expense to temporary settings that I might not vibe with... but I admit that the introduction of these characters took me by pleasant surprise. I hope I'm not alone in feeling this way and hope that providing positive feedback, we can help encourage more intriguing character designs.

LOL are you 4 real dude? These villains are so forgettable, even the Jailer was a lot better (at least before they made him seem like he was behind everything that had happened in the Warcraft universe). And let's not forget N'zoth, Azshara, Sylvanas, Garrosh, the Sha, Kil'Jaden etc etc.

Sure I get it, you saw their unique character models and fell in love with them instantly, but cmon.

[Caerule]

I like em!

Going with a villain team was definitely the right move. But yeah, they are straight-forward. We know their goals. We understand them. We understand their motivation.

The Jailer was a villain whose true motivations were not revealed to the very end. Who was a parasite on the existing WoW plotlines. These are a fun side plot.

Are these guys all "Pitiful mortals!" too? Yes. But at least we've got Iridikron who is actually cautious of us. I like that.

Now, are these guys just a tool for getting us to the dragon-related zones Blizzard wants to use for their over-arching narrative? Yes. But I like that too. The story of the Dragon Isles is that of the Dragonflights, their domains, and their rebuilding. These antagonists serve the purpose of furthering that. They expand the world of Azeroth.

Ragnaros was a simple villain. But he also ties in with the Dark Irons, he had the Flame Druid thing going on. And got us to see the Firelands. And interesting themed raid. So yeah, after the failure of a "complicated villain" with the Jailer, I'm all on board with these simple villains.

They look cool. They want revenge, and the restoration of their old world. We get to visit interesting places in our efforts to thwart them. I'm here for it.

[loras]

I like em!

Going with a villain team was definitely the right move. But yeah, they are straight-forward. We know their goals. We understand them. We understand their motivation.

The Jailer was a villain whose true motivations were not revealed to the very end. Who was a parasite on the existing WoW plotlines. These are a fun side plot.

Are these guys all "Pitiful mortals!" too? Yes. But at least we've got Iridikron who is actually cautious of us. I like that.

Now, are these guys just a tool for getting us to the dragon-related zones Blizzard wants to use for their over-arching narrative? Yes. But I like that too. The story of the Dragon Isles is that of the Dragonflights, their domains, and their rebuilding. These antagonists serve the purpose of furthering that. They expand the world of Azeroth.

Ragnaros was a simple villain. But he also ties in with the Dark Irons, he had the Flame Druid thing going on. And got us to see the Firelands. And interesting themed raid. So yeah, after the failure of a "complicated villain" with the Jailer, I'm all on board with these simple villains.

They look cool. They want revenge, and the restoration of their old world. We get to visit interesting places in our efforts to thwart them. I'm here for it.

This.
Having a villain intelligent enough to be cautious, intelligent enough that convictions do not equate to victory... that's quite rare nowadays.

[Eosia]

I'm inclined to think this is less a Blizzard problem and more a Danuser problem. Dude fucking loves deep, interpersonal stories where we get to explore the inner workings of our protag/antags. This stuff works great with quests but I think it kind of falls flat on its face when you apply it to WoW's story. WoW is best (imo) when it lobs common sense out the door and stabs the planet with a giant fucking sword because reasons. I wish we'd get back to more of that stuff and less trying to figure out why some random character introduced for this expansion is big sad/mad.

Well, keep in mind this is his true first solo run. He inherited a mess for Shadowlands in terms of story. They were too deep in when AA got fired for his "Cosby Suite" shenanigans for him to really be able to make story changes at the level that needed to happen in order to save SL. We know AA was behind the whole "Let's burn Teldrassil!" thing. I imagine his "leadership" was also responsible for there actually being no reason for the Alliance to attack Uldir and deal with G'huun in the gome other than the fact it is there and has loot.

Danuser was also hobbled by the fact that Activision Blizzard was exerting too much control over the release cycle and forcing out patches that were not complete. And even though the official PR story is to deny it, we all know that Shadowlands had at least one 9.x patch missing and I imagine they could have also done more 9.x.y patches to advance the story like we saw back in Legion and once again in Dragonflight. I saw a comment in the Fallout 76 subreddit by someone who said they used to work at Blizzard and that the accountants had been given oversight of development. He used the scenario of Ion going to them stating he wanted to make Feature X, and would need six months and 10 developers to specifically work on this. The accountants would approve it, but would give him like 5 developers and four months to do it instead. Yeah, the comment is on Reddit so it is what it is, but that is your typical MO for a lot of US corporations, so I don't doubt that is actually what started happening during BfA and SL.

In terms of Danuser though, I will reserve my judgement on him until we get to at least Patch 10.2. I like the fact that Raszageth was present throughout the leveling process much like how Arthas was when we leveled up in Wrath. She wasn't some figure who popped up in the launch of the expansion and wasn't really seen from again until the final patch like The Jailer. I also like how the other three Primal Incarnates are NOT bosses in the next raid. This gives them more time to do something with them more like introduce more backstory that shows the Pantheon and the Keepers were not as benevolent as had previously thought/experienced. Because I fully expected that the next raid would have featured wings kind of like Sepulcher was with Fyrakk and Vyranoth being the bosses of their respective wings and Iridikron being the capital boss of the whole raid.

[jeezusisacasual]

Well, keep in mind this is his true first solo run. He inherited a mess for Shadowlands in terms of story. They were too deep in when AA got fired for his "Cosby Suite" shenanigans for him to really be able to make story changes at the level that needed to happen in order to save SL. We know AA was behind the whole "Let's burn Teldrassil!" thing. I imagine his "leadership" was also responsible for there actually being no reason for the Alliance to attack Uldir and deal with G'huun in the gome other than the fact it is there and has loot.

Danuser was also hobbled by the fact that Activision Blizzard was exerting too much control over the release cycle and forcing out patches that were not complete. And even though the official PR story is to deny it, we all know that Shadowlands had at least one 9.x patch missing and I imagine they could have also done more 9.x.y patches to advance the story like we saw back in Legion and once again in Dragonflight. I saw a comment in the Fallout 76 subreddit by someone who said they used to work at Blizzard and that the accountants had been given oversight of development. He used the scenario of Ion going to them stating he wanted to make Feature X, and would need six months and 10 developers to specifically work on this. The accountants would approve it, but would give him like 5 developers and four months to do it instead. Yeah, the comment is on Reddit so it is what it is, but that is your typical MO for a lot of US corporations, so I don't doubt that is actually what started happening during BfA and SL.

In terms of Danuser though, I will reserve my judgement on him until we get to at least Patch 10.2. I like the fact that Raszageth was present throughout the leveling process much like how Arthas was when we leveled up in Wrath. She wasn't some figure who popped up in the launch of the expansion and wasn't really seen from again until the final patch like The Jailer. I also like how the other three Primal Incarnates are NOT bosses in the next raid. This gives them more time to do something with them more like introduce more backstory that shows the Pantheon and the Keepers were not as benevolent as had previously thought/experienced. Because I fully expected that the next raid would have featured wings kind of like Sepulcher was with Fyrakk and Vyranoth being the bosses of their respective wings and Iridikron being the capital boss of the whole raid.

I love the idea of the Night Elves losing their homeland and watching as they see it ripped from them it creates some truely horrific scenarios that gives the villains some real teeth ( i love a real bastard you hate ya know ). If anything we should see more flat out pure evil scenarios by the warcraft villains who are just evil to be evil for evils sake we need more King Jofferies and less Legion of Doom ( or any other weekend children villain ). Why have we not seen a Kefka moment as in poisoning an entire water system to kill them in a siege situation ( this would have been fantastic during BFA and cementing Sylvanas as a real nasty one at that ).

[LemonDemonGirl]

They're rather boring. Generic evil dragons who were imprisoned! Oh so creative! /j

[Ielenia]

- sadly the whole DRAGON islands seem to be built around the human forms of dragons, which is kinda weird
- if the land was frozen in time, and if dragons lived there, why does the whole island look like dragon-elf island?

On those points, it's because the place is also designed to house the other drakonids, which are more human-sized. That's explained in the lore somewhere, I forget which NPC talks about it.

And now for my own interpretation here, I think it's easier to build a more comfortable home for a human-size entity than a massive dragon-sized entity.

[McNeil]

Blizzard made it very hard for me to get excited for their villains, doesn't even matter for which game. I just hope that these new ones at least do something cool before they get the axe. All Raszageth did was shout a lot and then dies. All the Jailer did was spout a lot of extremely generic villain dialogue, shows off his nipples and dies. At least these villains came out of nowhere and then died, I'm still dissapointed at how they treated N'Zoth and Sargeras.

[username993720]

I don't even get why they have Visage forms in the first place. Who gave them those powers? Can proto dragons transform into humanoids? Does elemental magic have this power? I always assumed it was a titan thing, coming from Arcane magic, to let Dragons either infiltrate or integrate into mortal societies.

[Selah]

I am gonna say it.
They ARE very generic and one dimensional.

The only reason why they look appealing is because they were a surprise. I gotta say, they got me too. I totally believed the 4 primal aspects were just boring generic baddies with generic boring names, motives and characters.

And if we saw these models a year ago during the datamining, we wouldn't be as excited about them as we are now.


I applaud blizz for keeping them secret for this long, tho

This is pretty much my thoughts too. Yeah, they're better than the last few, but that's because WoW has always had pretty poorly written stories and characters. It's sort of like getting a "new to you" car that has an engine that actually works but there's still holes in the floorboard.

[Daronokk]

Primal Incarnates are trashy asspull boring Aspect clones with one dimensional personalities and cliche aesthetics.

[CaptainV]

Imho they at least have a goal which is clear and consisce unlike the Jailors "Look at my mastur plan hurr durr" but at the same time they are very underwhelming because they are just, well, nothing particularly impressive or terrifying.

Their goals are too "In-Personal" as opposed to "Personal" which means you dont care because your not affected.

If they succeed, it wont really matter.

They have more character to them than chars like the Jailor did, but the issue is, that without that element of these chars do things you care about to people/places you care about then you dont, really have a reason to give a shit.

Ysera being brought back from the dead is a good example of this.

Undermining that entire point of her dying to bring her back 3 expansions later is just utterly bad writing, its literally the idea that you cant keep a character death and make someone feel sad for loosing them without finding an excuse to return them.

Worse, imma call a spade a spade and say this, it was done with intent to undermine Malfurion as a character so that Tyrande could have a moment rather than making BOTH equally interesting and giving them moments to do things that let them grow.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I'd say that MoP and WoD had the most entertaining villain ensembles to fight.

MoP had multiple threats you were invested in fighting in. First, the seven Sha. You killed most of them during the levelling experience, which made it feel like you had made a lot of progress (with only the Sha of Fear and the mysterious Seventh Sha being saved for the patches). The horrors of the Mogu's rein and the enigmatic Thunder King were built up during the levelling experience, so finally getting to fight him was fun. And then you had Garrosh who had been built up for years, + a few lieutenants such as Zela and Malkorok that more dedicated lore enthusiasts were invested in).


WoD had an ensemble of badass Orcs, the embodiment of Warcraft. They had cool designs, cool backstories, were intimidating, and you got to kill them off at an even pace throughout the expansion, so it felt like you were making progress. By the end of 6.0, you had defeated 3 with only 3 more remaining to go.




I don't really care about the Primalist Incarnates. Meh characters. Character designs that are inappropriate for the IP. Unintimidating.

[Lord Pebbleton]

I do not like that we don't know where the story is headed, which was a huge point of contention in Shadowlands, but at least this time around we can make an educated guess.

The incarnates have a reason to be bad guys. They are angry and destructive, and sometimes that is enough (surely better than whatever the Jailer was doing). On top of that, their design is awesome, especially Iridikron. The Jailer was just a ragged guy, and I get that him being a prisoner was the main reason for... everything, but he was forgettable in motives, personality and looks. I mean, we got more personality exposure for the incarnates in that 2-minute video than in two years of Shadowlands for the blue man. Fire guy is hot-headed, ice lady is cool-headed, Iridikron keeps them together.

Jailer failed to check literally any villain tickbox. Incarnates so far have memorable looks, defined personalities, and bland motives. But even a bland motive is better than no motive at all, so in my book, these villains work for the time being.

[Unlimited Power]

At least these villains seem to be taking the player characters serious as a threat unlike Zovaal the 4D chess master.

[Jastall]

I do not like that we don't know where the story is headed, which was a huge point of contention in Shadowlands, but at least this time around we can make an educated guess.

The incarnates have a reason to be bad guys. They are angry and destructive, and sometimes that is enough (surely better than whatever the Jailer was doing). On top of that, their design is awesome, especially Iridikron. The Jailer was just a ragged guy, and I get that him being a prisoner was the main reason for... everything, but he was forgettable in motives, personality and looks. I mean, we got more personality exposure for the incarnates in that 2-minute video than in two years of Shadowlands for the blue man. Fire guy is hot-headed, ice lady is cool-headed, Iridikron keeps them together.

Jailer failed to check literally any villain tickbox. Incarnates so far have memorable looks, defined personalities, and bland motives. But even a bland motive is better than no motive at all, so in my book, these villains work for the time being.

Yeah, I think a big difference with the Jailer is that the narrative so far isn't trying to pretend it's more clever than it is. Jailer was a walking, talking contrivance presented as a 420 IQ all according to plan schemer, whereas Incarnates are big bad dragons presented as big bad dragons. They drive the plot without hijacking it. The concept isn't exactly revolutionary or anything but I'll take safe and half-decently executed over trying too hard and making a gigantic mess of a villain.