I think it is more than an effort issue. It is a talent issue. Even with a bad story a good writer would be able to create a good bad guy.
Let’s not forget that they still made Denathrius ruler of all Revendreth and mastermind behind the cosmic dreadlord conspiracy.
He’s a great villain for his personality, but Blizz still couldn’t resist shoving him into their hierarchy of big bads of the universe.
True buuuuuuuuut I can’t help but feel his motive was just “I’m sick of these sinners and these mortals and their stupid problems, I want it all gone”. Compared to Zovaals dumb “i wuhna help against bigger baddy”
Pretty soon the bad guy will be so powerful that players will have to be walking God’s to even have a chance at winning
It’s honestly getting a bit ridiculous
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Denathrius is great and all, but let’s not give the writers too much credit here. At the end of 9.0’s storyline he literally says that the only power that remains will be death “and those that helped to shape its victory.”
Motivation-wise he’s just power hungry. Which is fine, villains don’t need to be overly complex or anything. But I don’t know if I can necessarily say his motivation is better than Zovaal’s reasons for cosmic conquest.
The writers might change him up between now and when we see him next, but I 100% believe their initial intention was to present him as just a tyrant intoxicated with his own potential.
I meantioned the movie Frightners in another thread. Its silly as it gets, but the bad guys and the story twists make it really good regardless. The FBI agent is really a great character. All the ‘good’ guys end up pretty much being bad guys all coming at the main character for one reason or another.
Kinda like Drustvar. Low key but compelling.
I get ya I’m just rambling. Renathal just talks about how Denathrius seemed happier in the past and it wore away with time. He could have been acting. Maybe maybe not.
He’s still smug and I love him. I like his sassy smugness compared to “huehuehue all according to keikaku” from Zovaal as the writers practically spoon feed him victories
Its world of WARcraft…but for some reason the writers keep forcing us to work together thus negating any reason for us to be at war with each other.
At a point this is Hatfield and McCoy territory and Im looking for the kids with 12 toes. lol
It will be. " God Champion Maw Walker there is no way to defeat this villain "
Our response will be Heresy detected
I choose to believe Bolvar was a dreadlord when he told us to bring the Primus’s sigil to Torghast. My sanity depends on this. I could literally die from stupidity overdose otherwise.
The last time I could honestly connect to a villain in this game was VanCleef and his daughter. I wish we had more villains like that. People with actual motives, not “There’s a big bad and I’m actually trying to stop it by destroying everything” (Which will never make sense Blizzard, stop with this idiotic halfassed BS).
See the problem with that is good just doesn’t apply to Blizzards writers these days…if they even have any still around.
Yeah they sorta dug themselves a hole now. We are supremely powerful beings now. Some lowly “muahahah take over Azeroth with my buddies” guy would be instantly crushed. We basically need to have antagonists who are a threat to more than just our tiny planet.
I was hoping for a Light-as-evil villain. If written well, that could be nice. Could be lots of lore to explore too, have pallies and priest characters who begin to question their use of the light. Get some more Naaru lore in there, have beings like A’Dal make an appearance again, have some chaos within the ranks of the order halls. They could have some civil strife on a smaller scale too; a resurrected Scarlet Crusade, empowered by corrupt Naaru (since the crusaders themselves are zero threat as they are; they’d need to be “boosted”). I dunno, but I do agree we need more interesting and well developed bad guys.
Who were the best bad guys? Arthas. Mor’ladim. Kel Thuzad. Ragnaros. Hakkar. Death wing. Cho’gall. Illidan. Kaelthas. Sylvanas. Alliance/Hirde Leaders (Varían and Saurfan). Azshara.
Worst bad guys? The jailer. Death magic Sylvanas. Every old god. Yes, even that one. Sargeras.
Here’s the thing. Small stories are good. I’m not saying larger stories don’t work, but you lose SO MUCH when you take something out of mystery and make it concrete.
The Titans “created” humans, dwarfs, and gnomes. Then the old gods’ corruption made them flesh. “Awesome story.”
Here’s a factory where things are made and here’s the machine and the stuff that goes into making them. “Ew. Gross. Robots. Wtfbbq blizzard why is my story trash?”
See the difference? When the motives and machinations of reality sculpting entities (aka gods) are made mundane enough for mortals to understand them, they cease to be captivating.
Sargeras should never have been more concrete an entity than the offscreen deep voice that comes out of the bubbling fel blood. Amunthal shouldn’t have a face for us to analyze for emotions that SHOULD BE so alien to us as to be indecipherable.
That’s why God/Yahweh, The devil/Samael/Lucifer are such compelling characters. What we’ve done now is probably too damaging to recover from, because we’ve lost some grandness that can never be reclaimed.
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A good villain should be the hero of his own story, and their goals and reasons should be understandable to the audience, even if you disagree with them.
In WoW they just throw out an “I was super secretly working for the greater good all along and I had to kill you all so you wouldn’t get killed by something else” at the end of a boss fight.
I know some people hate the “other game” being mentioned. But something like Emmet Selch is a great example of what a Villain can be.
The closest we really have in WoW would be probably Edwin VanCleef.
What they need is to take notes from the hearthstone team and there stories. Like one night in karazhan