Kil’jaeden being deceived by Sargeras is fine until you realize that veil of deception was dropped and Kil’jaeden didn’t turn on Sargeras. He continued to sacrifice both his people and their world in order to carry out the plan of wiping out all life in the cosmos. Him being envious of Velen would have been fine if there had been any build up to it at all. There was none. It was just “Oh I’m dying for realsies this time, Velen my brother I always envied your convicition and faith please forgive me.” Out of absolutely no where.
Mortals slay gods constantly and Kil’jaeden himself had already seen what we’re capable of. There’s zero excuse for him to stay sided with Sargeras.
The original lore for Sunwell implied that was what he was trying to do. Basically to prove that if he could conquer Azeroth, he was able to achieve something that Sargeras could not. Therefore he should be the leader of the Burning Legion.
Oh I agree. This was something I used was further explored on Argus. However Argus was not originally planned for Legion. In all honestly, legion and BFA felt like 2 expansions that were merged together for both. Considering that blizzard wanted to make ‘1 year expansions’ starting with WoD, until that blew up in their faces. Legion was basically over after we defeated the Fallen Avatar until Velen went through the portal to confront Kil’jaeden. Even Ion made a remark that ToS was the ‘ICC’ was Legion when he announced patch 7.3 at blizzcon.
We did have help from Kalecgos and the sunwell itself once she broke free from Kil’jaedens control. Plus Kil’jaeden was not fully summoned. You may call these ‘excuses’ but they are actual facts.
A Dragon and sentient magic aiding us isn’t really a counter to the fact that Mortals slay gods all the time. We also slay dragons and right before we flush Kil’jaeden back down the Sunwell we slay a living embodiment of void magic.
Yes, little ‘g’ gods. Sargeras is a God. Big ‘G’. There is a difference between the two. Even the Old Gods are little ‘g’ gods compared to the titans. As shown with Aman’thul and Y’shaarj. The only reason why Sargeras needed the Legion was because he couldn’t be several places at once. As he discovered when he was fighting Demons before he learned about the Void Lords. Hell, we don’t even fight Sargeras in Legion. Instead we fight a titan soul in an Avatar body (Aggramar) and a titan soul that was tortured and drained for 25k+ years while we had help from the other titans. If it wasn’t for Eonar’s magic tree of dues ex Machina, we would’ve lost. So you can imagine just how powerful Sargeras is if we struggled against Argus.
We know Theolen went to Revendreth via his sinsotne.
Old God Corruption crazy, such as Deathwing.
Due to magic wagic woo woo lovecraft sorcery, madness was sort of “imposed” upon him.
While yes, the Evil Due To Crazy should be sent to Revendreth for the reasons you outlined, the aspect of Old God corruption, tentacles and all, likely meant he ended up in the Void Plane.
Except Neltharion willingly sided with N’zoth through the bargain they made, which was implied in the Charge of the Aspects short story. So really, Neltharion would’ve ended up in Revendreth with his major sin being Wrath. Mainly due to his shear hatred towards the Titans for giving him this ‘curse’ and how he sought to destroy everything they had built on Azeroth because of that hatred.
It wasn’t out of nowhere. This angle was around since Rise of the Horde, in which Kil’jaeden recollected to himself that on Argus, Velen was the wisest and most knowledgeable of the three leaders. It’s why he was so stricken by Velen’s “betrayal” and obsessed with hunting Velen down; the fact that the wisest, most stalwart and “best” of them rejected Sargeras’ offer called into question Kil’jaeden’s own decision to accept it.
He’d made what he considered the ultimate, most important decision he’d ever made, and doubt was immediately cast on that when the smartest guy in the room didn’t make the same choice. Consequently he spent the next 25,000 years trying to destroy Velen because doing so would prove to Kil’jaeden once and for all that he made the right choice and Velen didn’t. That his calculated, rational decision had won out over Velen’s leap of faith.
Faith was the one thing Velen had that Kil’jaeden completely lacked; Kil’jaeden saw the world through a lens of calculated risk, which is why when something like Sargeras approached them promising what he did, all Kil’jaeden saw was a choice between either accepting the offer, or being forced to accept by any entity powerful enough to be making such offers.
Yet Velen’s faith led him to choose differently, and it drove Kil’jaeden up a wall because he couldn’t rationalize such a choice due to it coming from the one part of Velen that he never really understood. Kil’jaeden envied Velen’s faith because it was something he knew he was incapable of having himself.
I remember reading Rise of the Horde. It was a good book and being reminded of it sure there is this background to it and that’s great. But we’re never given a moment where Kil’jaeden doubts his decisions or feels any remorse for lives sacrificed by his choices. Not in game or in this nearly two decades old book and besides you and me very very very few people have actually read.
Reading this has admittedly changed my mind about Kil’Jaeden a bit, but overall I think Blizzard can still be faulted for not doing a good job of showing any of this in game. Like, even a flashback or vision on Argus would have been nice.
Yep. I do my best to stay invested in the lore of this game, but I have not read the vast majority of Warcraft novels, so alot of this is news to me.
yes I think Deathwing could have been redeemed. The problem with the Old Gods is the more you listen to the whispers the more you think they are the truth. It’s why Locus Walker tells Alleria to believe that all the whispers are lies, because they are really truths and when you start to believe they are true you are lost to that way of thinking. That’s the madness of following the Old Gods and what the Old Gods say is revolutionary. For example they have a whole other history that diverges from the Titan history and it paints the Titans in a really poor light. He says that Azeroth was merely a Titan experiment that they just abandoned and his charge as Earthwarden wasn’t a blessing it was a curse, he carried Azeroth’s heart, he carried her pain.
I really like that the Ardenweald story with Y’sera actually brought Deathwing back as a shadow of her past that she has to reconcile. I don’t think they will outright say that everything Deathwing did was okay but I hope they open the door to talking about or questioning if Deathwing was yet another victim of the duality of this universe.
Once you get to the point that you’re breaking the world with your tantrums, death is the only option. There is no conceivable way to hold him safely and he had no desire for redemption.
What’s really ridiculous is comparing these two situations. Alexstraxa. was being held by evil forces, she wasn’t a danger, she was a victim.
I miss the just “Hey I’m evil because I’m just evil” black/white villains, but they’re no longer written for a reason. It’s very hard to write just a pure evil character, and requires a ton of writing skill, a crazy amount of luck, and gain a fast following of fans.
While making a villain with a tragic backstory and all will one way or another work. Even if it’s not written well, someone is going to like it. While a just pure evil Villain if not written well will be hated by all, and regarded as just a Saturday morning cartoon villain. Villains have more of a backstory these days than the story’s protagonist/hero, and have gained more support, it has gotten a bit much.
Also if the character is in a visual medium, they need a good actor / voice actor to present them as such. Can’t have a charismatic pure evil villain with a monotone voice.
Some people still right pure evil villains, they are just usually saved for the big finale. Such as Horde Prime in the Netflix / Dreamworks She-ra series. We are never given a sympatric motive for his actions. He just has a God complex. Meanwhile the shows other antagonists (Catra, Hordak, SW and Light Hope) do. Yes even Shadow Weaver has one (sort of).
Right very true! There are many villains very memorable with their voice actor alone. Tony Jay being very famous for that. Just recently there is Denathrius who is highly praised for his voice. Props to Ray Chase for that splendid voice.