And acts stupid for a villain the writers set up as a 5 head master planner with 6D chess skills. They wrote Zovaal to be like Denathrius or your average Dreadlord, then presented him like any other meathead WoW boss spouting grandiose lines about how all powerful and unbeatable he is (while not really doing anything, his minions do all the work).
It’s just like… pick a lane will ya?
My theory?
Zovaal was seen as a blunt instrument to “clear the way” for 10.0. There was a sort of logic within Blizzard to not get emotionally invested or care about the effort they put into him, because they all knew they were going to throw him out in the end.
Meanwhile, once they got a bit attached to Denathrius, they made every effort to ensure he could be saved from the fire, and once they knew they were going to keep him they doubled-down on their investment in him knowing it wouldn’t be “wasted” on this expansion alone.
So Denny got all of their love and passion whereas Zovaal was simply a means to an end to pave the way to what they “want” to do.
This all assumes the Danuser X Afrasabi drama is real, which I think holds up to a degree (both of them are two proud to respect the other’s work, Danuser would literally waste an entire two year expansion to burn down Afrasabi’s work to make way for his own).
Why does this whole thing look like a Dragonball sequence to me? Or is that the point?
The bar is very low at this point. A guy from the mailroom could write the story and it be better.
Semi immortal robots needing mortals to make god level robots Every week I see more story, and go…damn, the writing bar can be lowered.
It’s Sailor Moon. DBZ has way more yelling and unforgettable villains with more then two forms to defeat! 
Sire and Nathanos haven’t had their loose ends addressed yet so it’ll be fun to see how low the bar can go.
I can kind of see the logic behind this, but historically main villains have almost never survived the expansions in which they are featured. Even if the Danuser/Afrasiabi drama never happened, I honestly can’t see a universe where the Jailer survived Shadowlands. Garrosh survived MoP just so he could kick off the next expansion, and then got killed in a cutscene during the quest experience. Sargeras got to survive Legion because he’s iconic, but alt-Gul’dan and Kil’jaeden weren’t so lucky. All other major villains were killed off in their respective expansions (unless you’re a N’zoth conspiracy theorist, of course).
It also feels super weird that the entire team sort of resigned themselves to having two expansions relegated to the role of “filler.” I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like that before in WoW’s history.
I personally think the correct explanation for the Jailer is also the simplest one; the writing team genuinely believes that the best villains for WoW are the ones that are big, bad, and boring.
It genuinely surprised them how much everyone loved Denathrius’s role in Shadowlands, so they had to do last-minute story tweaking to save him. If that sounds familiar, it’s exactly what happened to Bwonsamdi in BFA. He initially wasn’t going to have any role in Shadowlands, but when fans deemed him the best character of the expansion (because he was) that had to change.
And remember who turned out to be the big bad of BFA? N’zoth. Inherently not a bad choice, but they wrote him so poorly. They chose to characterize him as yet another big bad who speaks slowly in a booming voice while insulting us as “mortals.”
But if you want a slice of what we could have gotten, just look at Azshara’s warbringer short. Fish N’zoth oozes with personality. That swindling, mocking, fishy dealmaker type is exactly what everyone loved about Bwonsamdi. We thought we would get that again when N’zoth finally made his move. Instead, he does tentacle stuff to two zones and then dies to a giant laser, and now the writing team can’t bear to reveal whether or not they actually intended that to be the moment of his death in the WoW universe (they might retcon it later due to fan pushback, but this totally was meant to be the way they killed him off).
The “speak slowly and be big” villain archetype is something the writing team genuinely either loves for themselves or believes us to love. Maybe they’re trying to recapture the love the community had for Lich King Arthas and Sargeras. Maybe they simply don’t know how to write anything better and only occasionally strike gold with Bwonsamdi, Azshara, and Denathrius. Maybe all three of those characters are actually written terrible and it’s the voice actors’ input that ultimately saves them.
Regardless, and maybe this is just me being pessimistic, but I believe Zovaal is the way he is because the writers genuinely tried their hardest to make what they thought was a good villain.
90% of these people from the back row:
“Yeah! The writing is bad!”
looks around for approval
Seeing the reawakening of metal gear memes recently ive been convinced to play it. Its every bit as awesome as it looks.
Yes I have been too. Metal Gear is an awesome series. Glad we agree on something
Next major villain is a stormwind nobleman that is a dad that played college ball and would’ve gone pro if he didn’t join the 7th Legion confirmed.
Next villain should be a politician in Warcraft universe. Then becomes a meme
Yea, Nobles are the equivalent of politicians for stormwind, it’s a shame that they never ever got seen outside of the Onyxia disguised as a noble arc.
Like it’s unfounded lmfao. The Jailer literally walks up to our very not secret hideout and says “Leave them, it is of little consequence”. Spoiler alert, it was of quite a lot of consequence.
Also known for the banger such as “Interesting…” and “Nothing escapes the Maw” about 2 seconds before everyone escapes the Maw. Not to mention, his Mawsworn were escaping the Maw during the pre-patch event.
The writing is just bad.
I will never forgive them for what they did to death knights
Ion: “Yes, this is the land from which Death Knights draw their power”
Death Knights: Get their one utility nerfed, Do nothing story-wise, Get no cool new customizations, Have their leaders turned into bumbling idiots
I’m alright, trust me
And then make them generic paladins but mwah death
There is bad writing for sure, but it’s obvious sometimes people are making stretches to complain about everything.
Like robots for example, half our races are former robots why is it suddenly a problem?
The problem is it’s terribly written and just a cheap knock off of the same thing we have done already
just play monk,DH,warlock none of these classes get hurt by lore because blizzard is great at forgetting we exist lorewise, it’s great.
It was hilarious when we had a dreadlord infestation but we didn’t call in any of the Illidari to the Shadowlands to sniff them out.
Fair, for example I really don’t think Arthas was done that dirty. I think he had a fitting end, minus being monologued at by Sylvanas. Nobody deserves that fate.
I think my problem was just how it’s been framed. The Shadowlands were marketed as a deep fantasy mysterious realm of death. Fast forward one year and we are done learning about the afterlives and we are on a Titan+++ hidden workshop where they created robo-gods. I just think it’s silly and like it came out of left field.