This habit is killiing of major characters you just meet in new zones. Death can be interesting and meaningful (or shocking and violent when you want to be less sentimental about it).
But something I see consistently in early leveling zones is this immediate jump to killing off a character and then asking the players to have emotional reactions to characters who were never given time to grow.
Ara’lon was in the cinematic for Ardenweald and gets iced very quickly. Sendrax in dragonflight gets iced very soon after being one of the first new major npcs we meet. Baelgrim is also the first major npc we meet in the war within and his death comes very suddenly in a lackluster way.
We never have opportunities to see these characters shine so we feel very little when they do kick the bucket.
Strangely-- characters who we do feel a lot of emotions for, who have been around for a long while, rarely do get to die (unless they’re a horde character getting turned into a loot pinata but that’s a whole thread’s worth of other topics).
We need to form attachments to new characters and see them continuously. One of the better new characters in the war within is Dagran. I really like what they’re doing with him and I think he’s one of the best new characters wow has had in a good while.
I’d like to see more horde characters like that. What they’re doing with Gazlowe is good, but he’s a very old returning character.
I really would have liked to see some continuity in new characters like Taelia or Kiro from BFA who I felt have a lot of potential to play roles in the story.
I think it’s a solid point. The “Heroic Sacrifice” is something that needs to be deployed sparingly and carefully to maximize its impact. The three repetitive instances you’ve marked all feel too short and too weak.
I don’t think the impact of a character’s death necessarily depends on how long we’ve known the character. Think about Runas in Legion: he was only around for one quest chain, but people really reacted to his sad fate.
That said, I did notice the pattern you’re talking about, and I found it a bit eyeroll-y.
Baelgrim only existed to make Lufsela and Adelgonn look more competent, which is why he looked like a backwards incompetent buffoon for much of the campaign. About as much thought went into his exit. I’d argue there’s an overcorrection (addressing the blatant juvenile male power fantasy that informed the franchise) going on with the storytelling that involves an overdependence on emasculation as a plot device, and Baelgrim is another mile marker on that road.
I will point out that fresh characters being killed off for dramatic effect has been going on for a long time before Shadowlands. How well it is executed is a mixed bag: Ga’nar, Runas, Zelling, just to name a few.
Yeah, Runas doesn’t really fit the pattern I’m talking about. He wasn’t a major character introduced at the beginning of an expansion and his death was a surprise-- as was his face-heel turn. He’s not introduced as a heroic ally. He’s a well-written character who comes off as pathetic in a very human way.
He’s a secondary character death that hits hard in a good way because what happens to him is tied into the entire story of the nightbourne emotionally. You get worried about all the other nightbourne knowing what happens to him.
My guess it’s because he was loyal to the Titans, and they want to make that to look as bad as possible as preparation for the inevitable villain-battling.
They did the same thing with Sylvanas and Garrosh where they kill off any good loyalist characters to make loyalty look bad and shake off as many diehard supporters as they can before they throw the character under the bus and make them raid fodder.
Ara’lon is killed at the end of the Ardenweald covenant campaign (which is a max level campaign). I wouldn’t say that is “very quickly” given the other examples you listed actually die in their respective expansions leveling campaign. For the first zone no less. A better example for shadowlands would be Krexus. The Margrave of the House of the Chosen. He gets killed off-screan during the Maldraxxus leveling campaign, a bigger insult. Maldraxxus is the second zone for the SL leveling campaign but it happens sooner than the end of a max level campaign. Hell Krexus is even on the Shadowlands loading screen and was in a ton of Shadowlands promotional material.
I’d still say both. Ara’lon isn’t even around long enough to form an emotional attachment to him even if he’s around longer than a leveling zone duration.
No, you’re right. The egg is never bought up again after that quest line. Not even a HINT that it will show up later in a future content patch or expansion
At the very least Blizzard should have made it that the red dragon whelping that is part of the Daycare center stuff was that egg.
It does annoy me when obvious things don’t happen. To this day I am still stunned over how Thunderaan and the Air Elementals had nothing to do with N’zoths assaults on Uldum. It would’ve called back to when the elementals stood against the Old Gods when the parasites first came, but also be an act of atonement for the sins Al’Akir and his followers did back in Cata. Plus the fact that the entrances to the Skywall are in Uldum. Like come on.
Those two habits have been with Blizzard for a while; the overreliance on older characters without setting up new ones and clumsy villain-batting (though it’s not just Horde characters that get it).
Those trends only really started to turn around in BfA, and even then there were still instances of killing off major characters you just met (Delaryn Summermoon, Thomas Zelling) and poor/clumsy attempts at villain-batting (Yrel). That said, a lot of this was the product of toxic devs who are thankfully no longer with the company, and some of the villain-batting has been walked back.
I think Blizzard is uncertain about how to kill off long-running characters and fears fan backlash. For example, look how many complaints there were when Illidan was killed off in Burning Crusade and then when Malfurion seemed to be killed off in Dragonflight.
What will happen when/if the writers decide it’s time to permanently remove Thrall, Jaina, Sylvanas, Illidan or Azshara from the story and do so? It doesn’t help that some characters or groups had ideal moments to remove them from the story permanently but missed the chance (eg; given what we got, Legion would’ve been a good final curtain for Illidan, but the writers want to milk him in the future).
I would say that it was more about how they were “killed off” instead of that they were. Illidan was villain batted (along with vashj and Kael’thas) because Blizzard thought it was “cool” to fight these iconic WC3 characters. That was it. Illidan was no saint and even the Illidan novel does still say that but it did pull back the whole “he went insane after losing to Arthas” angle we got in TBC. Instead opting for him being so laser focused on defeating the Legion that he ignored what his subordinates were doing. To the point that Kael’thas defected to the Legion out of spite. As Illidan failed to live up to his end of their bargain in the end.
As for Malfurion in Dragonflight, iirc it was more about the fear that Blizzard was going to use that to bring Ysera back and become the Aspect of Dreams again. Meanwhile they were clearly setting up Merithra to succeed her mother in BFA. Only to pull that rug because reasons. If and when Blizzard does kill off their older characters, it should make narrative sense and not something born out of “rule of cool” or a lazy attempt to appeal to nostalgia. Varian’s send off in Legion is how it should be done imo.
I think you have a point about Illidan, though are you saying that if Illidan had been killed off in a different way in Burning Crusade, there wouldn’t have been calls to bring him back and he’d have been put to rest?
I agree completely about Varian’s send-off in Legion (I also say Blizzard overusing “rule of cool” is part of why the parts of the story that are a mess are that way).