i disagree.
i think that they did a good job with her.
i don’t think that she was going from °180, i just think that she was lying to herself and how she was dealing with her loss. going from wanting revenge and kill them all or go back to who she always was.
She simply didn’t know what to do, and i feel like that is very human.
when she left the kirin tor in legion it was when she believed that the horde abandoned them at broken shore and varian died because of it.
and for the record, i think that she has been very consistent with her book portrayals. maybe the ingame representations between mop and legion kinda failed but that always happens with almost every single wow character.
Jaina is a bad character for the same reason Saurfang is, she refused to accept responsibility for her actions and their negative consequences. This is likely more just the way blizzard writes, but i will never be able to call her a well written character until her mistakes are legitimately shoved in her face with the words YOUR FAULT on it.
Her regular breaches of neutrality and tendency to completely overreact to issues makes her just unlikable to me. And not unlikable in a good way, like a well written villain.
Fairly sure that was her entire time in the discount nightmare we saw everyone and everything shoving every mistake she has ever made in her face.
I mean it would be nice if blizz could dedicate 3 cgi things to anyone except saurfang this expansion. Then maybe people would remember jainas time there was spent doing exactly that and coming to terms with it. Sadly only orcs are allowed multi expansion pout fests like thrall.
Basically, thats literally her entire arc in kultiras.
daelins death, the people of theramore, arthas, basically everyone, showed in her face as “YOUR FAULT”. hell, even her purge of dala while she was rescuing baine.
“Murderer,traitor” ect. all her actions are still there with her and she had to accept her responsability for it.
She was already willing to die, but dying was easy.
She already payed the consequences for her actions.
and still is doing it.
Now i can’t deny that we had some inconsistencies with her ingame portrayals but i think that i understand her character perfectly, that is why i don’t agree that she was treated as badly as kael or other characters.
I’m going to go with Anduin or Jaina. Anduin because he hasn’t had a character progression, nothing about his philosophy has ever been properly challenged even in this expansion where it easily could have been. Jaina because her progression has been like a drunk driver at a demolition derby. All over the place.
I’d say Kael’thas is number one, I don’t even like seeing Lor’themar anymore because in his place could have been Kael’thas. Lor’themar is still is living in Kael’s shadow, and if I recall the devs didn’t know Lor’themar even existed and called him “Bob” or something along the lines if I’m not mistaken. That’s not a good replacement.
He was also a ranger, with no magical powers. Horde already had Sylvanas at the time, but she has powers. So traded in an epic awesome mage for a normal ranger, that’s even worse than the better ranger we already have?
Not to mention the way Kael was turned villain. He fought for the survival of his people at any cost, after a genocide and loss of his people’s city, … then joined the forces responsible for the genocide of his people? If that isn’t forced villainy, then I honestly don’t know what is.
Also the missed epic clashes between Jaina and Kael is just a missed perfect story arc. The emotions spawned from their fighting would just be unmatched. He would feel betrayed for her choosing Arthas, and enraged she commited a purge of his people. She would see him as filth joining the Horde. Not to mention epic mage battle!
Agreed, but the difference is that they were basically created for that arc. Kael, on the other hand, seemed to have his entire existing characterization from WC3 thrown into the trash.
All the easy ones have been taken by this point so I’ll go with…Saurfang and a side order of N’zoth annnd maybe just a dash of Al’akir.
Saurfang can’t decide what honor actually means to him, which is kind of a problem for a character with MUH HONOR as a defining character trait.
N’zoth went from spooky evil squid who manipulates people from behind the scenes with his many, many tentacles to just another rehash of Old God loot pinata.
And then we get Al’akir. The elemental Lord of Wind, the guy who took on Ragnaros, Therazane and Neptulon in a four way fight for domination in the distant past. The guy who commanded the one element that was everywhere and everyone depended on. So what does he do? His minions sandblast one town and then he dies like a chump in his own lair after doing…nothing.
I’m going to throw Kael’Thas in here too. That had to be a knife in the back for blood elf fans. I didn’t think much of it back during BC becuase I wasn’t into the lore (which is why I hated that expansion) but he was so underutilized. The house of Sunstrider was ended before it even got a chance. They could have found a way to redeem him or something but he got a major villain bat, turned on his own people and was killed off. All because Lor’themar’s messengers never got to him to tell him the Sunwell survived.
I wonder if Elven relations would have been better if he lived. Tyrande did almost die for him and his people.
Ignoring the obvious ones, Benedictus. Maybe they explained him a bit more to the Alliance, but his ending felt very much like a forced twist ending for Cata, with him having drawn the short stick.
Also Azshara - liked her better when it was just her being the naga leader and not N’Zoth’s handmaiden or whatever she is.
Nathanos too, but in a bit of a different way. He worked much better in small doses, like back in Classic. I don’t think he should have been elevated as much as he was though. Or maybe he should have been handled differently. Maybe it’s just too much of him in BfA in general.
I’d also say Baine, but that requires a very generous definition of the word “progression”. Can’t say he’s really progressed any over the years other than being promoted to roles that should have gone to better tauren (as in, any other named tauren).
Most troll characters. Chiefly because their stories all tend to get cut short to progress someone else’s story.
Zul’jin: Hero of his people and non-demonically evil WC2 hero. Killed off so blood elves could join the Horde before he got much character growth at all.
Vol’jin: Had a real nice character arc in which he goes against Garrosh and becomes Warchief only to be killed off to give Sylvanas a chance to ruin the faction.
Rastakhan: Had a real nice character arc of realizing his complacency, rising above it, and fighting for his kingdom only to get killed off so his daughter could take over the throne.
Troll characters thus far have only been allowed to have short story arcs in which they can be killed off through no fault of their own while similar characters like Thrall or Jaina get these long, winding story arcs that last several expansions where they make countless mistakes but keep bouncing back from them.
I got the feeling that her discount nightmare was basically shouting “JAINA’S ALWAYS RIGHT AND NO ONE EVER LISTENS TO HER. YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO HER BECAUSE YOU’RE WRONG.”
Is that the stated reason why Zul’Jin was killed? All they did for him in-game was stick Budd’s group around ZA, and have Zul’Jin’s mojo basically break his mind.
MU Gorefiend and Bladefist (both versions) could be added to the list as well - made into raid bosses (well, a dungeon for MU Bladefist) without having any major story contribution. Not sure if that’s ruined progression or not though, since I suppose they technically didn’t have an arc to start with.
It is certainly the reason Zul’jin gave in his Zul’Aman cinematic speech. He turned against the Horde because we allied with his ancestral enemies. From a story perspective he became our enemy the second Blizzard decided blood elves should be a Horde race.
And yah, those two were done real dirty as well. Almost all the Old Horde characters that could’ve been added to Thrall’s Horde were turned into enemies and loot fodder. The worst part being they weren’t even given the courtesy of being major villains. Just one and done nothings.
No, lol, she made many mistakes and the only thing that her mother and she did was accepting it and try to move on carring with the weight of those decisions, is the only way to move forward.
not sure what else you expected, that she goes suicidal like saurfang?
and i mean, she kinda did when she accepted the death sentence.
like i said before, dying is easy and is not making ammends for their actions.