"Only I can save this world!"

Wyrmrest Accord
1

Okay so…does anyone else miss when bad guys actually talked like bad guys?

Like, back in the day, every Big Bad wanted to destroy the universe basically for the sake of it. But nowadays, their motivation is fueled more by a SEVERELY misplaced savior complex.

First, Sargeras. He started the Burning Legion because fighting demons for centuries left him nihilistic and made him believe that fighting against the universe’s inevitable destruction is pointless, so why bother?

Then he got retconned, and now his goal is to wipe out all life in the universe for its own good - specifically to keep everything from turning into a void-fueled nightmare.

Next, Arthas. He was just your typical high fantasy overlord who wanted to take over and/or destroy the world. But THEN, retcon, and now he wanted to make everyone undead in order to…defend the planet?

And just recently, after putting it off for months because I’m a horrible procrastinator, I finally get around to fighting N’zoth and, after revealing that Sylvanas MIGHT be in league with the Jailer, he shouts, and I quote “Only I can save this world! Yield…and serve!”

I’m sorry - what? Really, N’zoth? You’re a giant tentacle monster who’s been going on and on about nightmares and madness and now you’re trying to tell me that you’re one of the GOOD GUYS?

I dunno, maybe I’m nitpicking a bit. “Everyone’s the hero in their own story” and all that. Even Hitler thought he was the good guy, so I guess it would make sense if all the Big Bads thought they were the good guys too.

I guess I just miss villains who have no pretense of “I’m doing this evil thing for the greater good” and instead just wanna take over and/or destroy the world because, duh, they’re bad guys, what other reasons do they need beyond simple megalomania?

1 Like
2

i stopped reading most dialogue after mists so i don’t care one way or another, I had more fun reading old illidrama posts and ED ego twitter wars

4 Likes
3

Nah, Warcraft was always about the misplaced savior complex or, at worst, a fall from grace.

Illidan in BC? Once one of the greatest Night Elf sorcerers and trusted of Queen Azshara. Brother of Malfurion and would be lover of Tyrande. Driven to antagonist status because of what he felt he had to do to stop the Legion.

Arthas? Champion of the Silver Hand and heir to the kingdom of Lordaeron. Started his fall from grace by “doing what needed to be done” to keep the plague in Stratholme from spreading and then hunted down the Scourge to Northrend, where he succumbed to the power of Frostmourne. And then we later find out that he totally could have unleashed the Scourge over all of Azeroth, but actually kept them in check.

Deathwing in Cataclysm? Once the most noble of the Black Dragons. A guardian of the Earth and all things that dwelt within it. Unfortunately, this exposed him to the whispers of the Old Gods, which slowly corrupted him and the rest of his brood, driving them mad.

Garrosh? He initially had an arc, where they were going to have him overcome the shame he felt about his father. They had him thrust into a position of leadership before he was ready. And had him do what he thought was necessary to “Make the Horde Great Again”. He even tells off Thrall in their final battle.

And good ol’ Sargeras. You’d think if anyone would be evil just for funsies, it’d be him. But nope. He was once a proud and shining member of the pantheon who fought the Old Gods at every step. It’s only when he became convinced that the only way to prevent the Void from devouring all was to destroy all life that he became master of he Legion.

I think they kind of had Azshara always being pretty full of herself, but there was even a time when all the Night Elves loved her, revered her as a kind of goddess-queen, and believed she could do no wrong. And even she’s less interested in destroying the world as opposed to ruling it.

WoW’s MO is to take characters that were once potentially noble, then have them conclude that the best way to fix a given problem is to kill a bunch of people, thus setting them down the path of irredeemable evil that must then be stopped by any means necessary.

4 Likes
4

I think this is just a WoW player peeve, because everywhere else I look- FFXIV as an example- people love the false savior mentality. It makes us emotional and feel betrayed because we can feel some sort of sympathy for the villain. I think that’s what makes a great villain, is wondering what pushed them to the edge to do “whatever means necessary” in order to save the world. Of course they can always be badly written, especially if their motives are still unclear. But it makes them more than just “bad guy does bad things” so people have a black and white narrative as to who is good and who is bad and won’t feel bad killing them.

3 Likes
5

To be honest, I think this is the reason WoW players have a distaste for it: none of the people who are false saviors in WoW are that sympathetic. N’zoth is an unknowable tentacle monster; Illidan is an annoying jerk, Arthas was cool if you played Warcraft 3 but in WoW mostly just cackles menacingly, and we straight-up never meet Sargeras until he tries to murder our planet. None of those people are anywhere near as interesting or charming or even developed as, say, Emet-Selch for instance.

(Is that technically a spoiler? I wish I could redact stuff in-line.)

I don’t think we’re going to get any tolerance for false saviors until Blizzard starts having some genuine pathos in their writing.

7 Likes
6

I honestly never minded it much. Some of my favorite villains in literature and gaming do honestly believe and operate as if they’re doing what’s best for everyone else. (Genichiro Ashina is a current favorite)

With WoW the execution is just… bad, though. But that problem extends through much of its narratives in general as it is.

7

I’ve never heard that Arthas wanted to make everyone undead to save the world. Where is that said?

I thought Blizz was going to write N’Zoth as “actually a good guy” but then in the end he just wanted to corrupt everything and we beat him. Just because he said he can save this world didn’t mean he would save it the way we want him to. He meant he would corrupt it to his vision. The invasions in Uldum and Pandaria plus the raid makes that pretty clear.

Maybe I’m interpreting things differently but so far only Illidan has actually been redeemed in my eyes. Everyone else has been bad.

8

Nowhere, it’s not a thing.

I mean… are you thinking about Bolvar as the Lich King? His motivations differ because, well, he’s not Arthas.

9

He doesn’t, but “do bad or morally questionable things in order to save everyone” was sort of the point of his original character arc. By the time we actually meet him in WoW, though, he’s lost that motivation basically entirely and is now just a straight-up evil dude.

He’s just an example of someone who was originally trying to do bad things to save everyone, but whose arc ended with him being basically just straight-up evil.

10

See, I have to admit I really don’t mind this kind of arc. It’s pretty much where my oldest character ended up–Karama’jin/Kefenu was always characterized by a willingness to commit increasingly shocking acts of brutality and corruption if it meant protecting those unable to protect themselves. I managed to maintain this in him for something like 15 years of development and story after story and eventually he just lost his moral balance and became a mass murderer of mind-boggling proportions.

I have a hard time being entertained by villains who are just evil for the sake of evil. This can still work, and does all the time for others, but I find them more compelling when some circumstance in their life has driven them toward it and then finally robbed them of their last shreds of restraint.

11

Power creep is some of the issue. How do you construct a villain who is both strong enough to pose a real threat to people who were slaying titans two expansions ago and at the same time has nuanced views on the best way to protect/save/progress the Universe/world/whatever that would bring them into conflict with us. (Actually Wrathion might fill some of that bill but I would hate to lose him to the villain bat)

I think some sort of power reset would really help the writing. I’m not sure how best to do it. Maybe as we move toward confronting the void lords it will open up several new planets where Azeroth is clearly has the weakest inhabitants and no one is impressed with us.

Wait I think they tried that in WoD and the Iron Horde imploded before the second patch.

1 Like
12

I know everyone is saying he doesn’t, but I believe there’s a bit in one of the Chronicle books about how he also knows the Void is coming or that the Old Gods are the greatest threat (once the New Guard decided to bench The Burning Legion as the penultimate big bads) and undead are immune to the corruption so clearly having the greatest army on Azeroth be dead is a big win.

To the OPs point, I earnestly blame two things: Game of Thrones, and the villain worship that the WoW player-base tends to get into. Game of Thrones (and to a lesser extent the rise in popularity of the books first, of course) tends to line up with when a lot of fantasy series started going “subvert expectations, bad is good, good is bad, players confused just means it’s working!”

For the latter, I mean… I’ll just say “It’s called WARcraft not PEACEcraft” sums it up. The demographic for slaughter and edginess is a core business demographic. Having the bad guys just be bad for bad’s sake is booooring, especially if you were allied with them at some point. “Garrosh did nothing wrong” “Sylvanas did nothing wrong” “Man I wish we could join Queen Azshara” “This trinket that represents me giving in to the desire to murder my own people at the behest of an Old God / Fire Minotaur Spirit is so cool.” Eventually they just started making it the norm and if a villain is going to be a villain for villainy’s sake they’ll make them a horrific caricature so we all laugh about killing them instead.

Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawl Uldum nat-soc Goblins. Laaaaaaaaaawl Chaotic Stupid big dumb orcs who talk funny before we get to them. Laaaaaaawl arrogant bit characters.

3 Likes
13

I feel as though Game of Thrones ruined a lot of things, in a way. Though that’s less GRRM’s fault than the way people tend to latch onto things and create fads.

3 Likes
14

Blizzard still has yet to top this in terms of villain monologues:

2 Likes
15

Such fond memories. I was living in an abusive situation the year that xpac came out and it helped me weather a lot of nasty things.

1 Like
16

Arthas only seemed like a good villain because he had the most complete story. WC3 being a singleplayer game is what made this the case; everyone else, from Illidan to Azshara, has had their story told–in bits and pieces–in WoW over the years, and all of them have suffered monumentally from it.

It isn’t that Arthas is a good villain, or that his story is good (though you can certainly think that) but that, primarily, his is simply the most whole and consistent. His isn’t so fragmented.

(also most of us saw his story when we were like, 11 or 12 or w/e, so there’s a good deal of nostalgia there too)

2 Likes
17

For the big bad villain, absolutely. Blizzard needs to have villains that you can actively fight, and the “mass storytelling” requirement is understandably needing to be linear. Blizzard should be really encouraging players to be fighting for “causes” instead of defeating evil, because at this point it’s really silly.

In my opinion, the rep faction system and how it was handled in MoP/Legion along with not having a single big-bad through the expansion being the focal point would be fantastic. Each faction being it’s own self contained, meaty story would be awesome.

18

I mean, there’s a point there (Though I was considerably older than that). Arthas’ story taken in isolation is good Dark Fantasy stuff. Plus Arthas’ monologue in the above trailer is just well written. “In the end all must serve the one true king.” is up there with Skeletor’s speech from Masters of the Universe in terms of hitting that appropriate level of menace and ham.

Coincidentally, if you’re a poor soul who has no idea what I’m talking about:

Frank Langella picked up this movie, put it on his back, and ran across the finish line. He didn’t have to go that hard. But he did. He did it for us.

2 Likes
19

While I’ll admit to at least liking one or two characters, I hold a special hatred in my heart for GoT because unfortunately I got exposed to a preposterous amount of people being “inspired” from it for how to design the stories for their Dungeons and Dragons games, which were all GRIMDARK and GRITTY and REALISTIC and designed to just really, really, really, really alienate or unsettle the already smaller female player demographic. Also the “Just good people who aren’t into this !@#$” demographic in general.

5 Likes
20

My favorite maddening GoT moment was being at an old job when GoT was at its height, discussing the really cringe way it treats women, and having the woman I was speaking to say “Maaaaan, that’s just how it was back in those days, maaaaan. It was harder.”

Really, ma’am. That’s how it was. Back then. In those days. In Westeros that isn’t real.

I never even finished book 2. Something exhausting about all of it. I can’t call them bad books, but I just didn’t get into them the way others did, and TBH at that point I had begun seeking out fantasy and sci-fi written by BIPOC and queer authors like N.K. Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor, Tade Thompson, Arkady Martine; I was absolutely sick to death of classic white bread heteronormative sexist racist fantasy (David Eddings was my breaking point, oddly, rather than GRRM).

But GoT, yes, something about it was very wearying. From the roller coaster of the final two seasons and the… let’s call it controversial ending, to the way the incessant desire to emulate it started to saturate so many other things, I was throwing my hands up in exasperation before long.

1 Like