Feels like everyone gets corrupted at some point.
Even all the way back in BC. We had Felmyst who died fighting back against the forces of the Burning Legion.
Only to ressurect not 5 mins later shouting for Kil’jaeden!!
Classic had Vael, Wraith had Syndragosa, Saurfang jr and the Ulduar keepers, Cata had Deathwing and Benedictus, MoP had the entire Shadowpan gone mad in that one dungeon, WoD had Yrel Stockholm syndrome ally with Grommosh by that final cutscene, Legion had Ysera gone wild, and BFA has the mechagnome prince converted in the alternate timeline.
All that’s mearly scratching the surface. What gives with Blizzards mind control fetish? It’d one thing if say, ONLY the void had mind control tendencies, but no, seemingly ANY power can turn their victims. Remember Keristraza in the nexus? She spends her entire life believing in the teachings of Alexstraza. However, a couple of malygos runes later and her whole life view shifts towards “it’s all about taking power”, okie dokie then…
Even the holy light is going around bewitching Tyruleon and trying to force itself in on Illidan’s Tats.
At least Bwonsamdi wines and dines us before he has his way, yikes.
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It’s cheap drama, and doesn’t require them to do the hard work of writing a character actually becoming corrupted or having a change of heart.
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Making characters turn evil of their own volition would require better writing.
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Also Furbolg getting corrupted and mind controlled by dark magic and evil during every appearance they make.
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they just pick stuff from dnd.
Entire 8.3 is just illithid campaign with mega-brain in the end. Like, they even picked exact model of mind flayers for bfa (while had more unique silithids in lore, even though they’re just bugs)
Thought this thread was going to be about aggressively curating content to force everyone to play only the one specific way Blizzard intends, but then perhaps these two things are related.
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Every tribe of trolls gets controlled by dark powers, too. But it’s an easy way of explaining why some group is just inherently bad, since we can never actually join the bad guy groups.
That’s why we don’t genocide those worthless bear people. They’re best used as an early warning sign that somethings going down.
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Mind control is lazy writing. Rather than come up with complex characters who have good reasons for what they do just make them mind-controlled!
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I don’t think you know the difference between mind control, and becoming corrupted.
Mind Control implies that someone forced them under their control against their will.
Corruption is a force so enticing that you convince yourself its the correct thing to do, and join them on your own will not against it.
Most of what you named are individuals who become corrupted and knew exactly what they were doing, and probably had no regrets. No one was controlling them.
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Dude WoD had that Warden who suddenly went all evil and corrupt for no apparent reason.
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Technically speaking the whole of Azeroth is essentially “gripped” by the void (ie. they really really want her).
We have several Old God’s just hanging aboot and many cults that empower them.
Vael wasn’t so much “mind controlled” as he was tainted and his mind warped (ie. the buff you get at the start of the encounter is his final boon before he looses control to the corrupted blood within him).
Syndragosa was enslaved, as an undead Arthas had the power to freely control her; quite actually mind-controlled as she fully obeyed the Lich King’s orders.
Saurfang’s kid was basically similar to Syndragosa; raised as a Death Knight to serve the Lich King, a bit different perhaps because there is this “loyalty” aspect to it so perhaps like a veil rather than a full mind-control.
Ulduar Keeper’s were tainted by the influence of Yogg-Saron; effectively gone mad by being responsible for it’s imprisonment (is Yogg a boy or a girl?) yet again not quite full “mind control” but like a confusion and chaos of the mind.
Deathwing I don’t think was mind-controlled by any means, tortured and kept captive to eventually rise up in anger and cast cataclysm among the lands. I want to say as a result of his black-blood he was susceptible to the void’s influence and was driven mad by the Old God’s whispers similar to the Ulduar Keeper’s.
Benedictus, you’ll notice by now this sort of re-occurring theme with the Void and the Old God’s; he had doubt in the light and the Twilight Cultists opened his ears up to the whispers of insanity from the old god’s.
Most of these cases are more about insanity and less about obeying the direct will of another; it’s an easy to perform story-telling trick (even though by now it’s super old) to turn an ally into an enemy.
Ysera’s was perhaps the most painful to see, simply because of how quickly it occurred; in most of these other cases it was eons of a nagging voice or something as simple as animating a dead being to serve you.
mind control or old gods corruption ; two overused classics
then again after 16 years you must run out of ideas.
Evil for the sake of evil just gets boring after a while. You can only have so many villains who just want to destroy the world… for reasons.
Motivation is a huge part of writing a believable villain. I think this is why so many people dislike Sylvanas these days, since we don’t fully understand the reasoning, as it has mostly been off-screen so far. I’m sure it is complicated to create a large-scale all-hands-on-deck storyline every two years. I have come up with some core motivation ideas below, that could drive individual or group behaviors.
Reasons people do bad things ( I could be missing some. These are off the top of my head):
- Power - physical or controlling
- Moral High Ground - I am right and everyone else is wrong, so they must die
- Competition / Peer Pressure
- Fear - of defeat, death, ridicule, etc
- Pride - could tie into fear of failure
- Protection - possibly fear of loss
- Duty or loyalty to the bigger bad
- Miscommunication or Misguided
- the LOLs or “because I can, cuz I’m totally evil”
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