What does Zovaal hate so much about the First Ones’ design that he feels the need to change? I feel like this is a massive missing piece to the story that would help frame what is going on. We know he wants to reshape reality and dominate it, but why?
Does no one else find it completely bizarre that we are left to speculate this? Especially since all of the Burning Legion and all lore up to this point has been summed up as Zovaal’s doing? We need to know his motivations for this to make sense.
You don’t get it. The evil death guy is evil because evil. It could not be simpler.
Gonna be honest
Don’t think Blizzard knows
I think there was a plan to have Zovaal be anti-Maw on some level, like Milton’s Lucifer to an extent
But there’s been so many narrative pivots to salvage the story that whatever Zovaal’s motivation was no longer exists
He hates that he cannot grow any hair and his nipples aren’t large enough. Such a tragedy, and he was never given any choice!
Surely that is a reason to remake any universe.
I assume they don’t want to give him an explained motive because they don’t want people agreeing with him. Let’s say Zovaal doesn’t like that the shadowlands is essentially a place to exploit souls too fuel itself for the sake of fueling itself.
[Distraught Child] [draenei]
Distraugt Child says: I’m just a kid! I got sick and it just got worse and worse. Let me go back to my mommy!
Return to Life (wrong)
Watcher Jacintha says: I understand why you chose to return the child, but unfortunately we cannot allow every child to return to life. They may not have much [anima] built up yet, but all children being immune to death causes much bigger problems.
Pass to Shadowlands (correct)
Watcher Jacintha says: You are correct. Sometimes we nudge children back to life so they can accumulate more anima, but unfortunately even children cannot be immune to death.
So looking at this questline we can see how souls are treated in the shadowlands, it seems to be a fundamental problem, they aren’t seen as anything much more than fuel so this place can sustain itself for whatever end.
Maybe if they gave Zovaal a good reason for hating the shadowlands other than “flawed design”, lines like Baine saying “FOR THE SHADOWLANDS!” would be seen as extremely stupid (I guess even stupider than it already is). Instead they just kind of want an evil guy to pin everything bad that happened on and then delete him without giving a clear reason for why he was doing what he was doing.
He’s secretly Vin Diesel, he’s angry cuz he’s Cameoing in this game!
I wanted to be the first to reference it, but suspected that Baal specifically would beat me to it. Zovaal is really just a badly-written version of Lucifer; he’s blinded by pride and pissed off that everything in creation doesn’t revolve around HIM. The ‘imperfection’ is less real and more him ‘not being in charge, like he should be’.
He’s just a generic villain with the sole purpose of being evil.
That’s it. That’s the character. The one that was behind everything that happened since WC3 apparently.
The truth is Zovaal saw the fan art, the erotic fan art and decided to destroy WoW in misplaced vengeance.
What erotic fan art? I must know… for story reasons!
It is funny how Amon as a villain has more development and a clear motive compared to Zovaal. And Amon isn’t exactly a good villain.
Amon had proper build up, had allies that agreed with him and his motives are simple, yet believable. He grew up knowing that he would one day become a Xel’naga as he was a race that could. When he achieved it, it was fine for a while but he ultimately saw the flaws and believed he was lied to for his whole life. And he wasn’t alone in this belief. To me that part is what makes it work, sort of. He was just the leader of the rebellious faction of Xel’naga. It wasn’t just him working alone. While Zovaal did have an ally (Denathrius), we don’t know when Daddy D sided with Uncle Z. And it is clear that Denathrius had his own vision of what a death conquered reality will be. When Denathrius lost, Zovaal just left him to rot. Which is why I find it weird that the Dreadlords are still working with Zovaal. Imagine if we had something or someone who could show the Dreadlords that their dear uncle betrayed their dear master. After all, Denathrius had served his purpose…
Another thing Bungie did right with Witch Queen. Let’s just say a certain someone was lied to from the start and we got to show them that they were lied to. Seeing that individual have an external crisis was great to see.
All the while displaying erotic fan art of himself in every cinematic.
Do we even know how Zovaal broke out of his chains? Also, why was he even called “The Jailer” when he himself was locked up and in chains? Shouldn’t he be “The Prisoner”? This has to be the sloppiest expansion to date. WoD was x1000 more cohesive than Shadowlands.
message for the developers.
do you know what you people are doing?
ion making all the decisions? no wonder this game is bad.
My running theory is that Zovaal never had a second ‘final’ version, and as such he shared the same extremism flaw of the other prototypes. they never quite explain the nature of the extremism, but my bet it is of the “death before everyone else” kind.
Ergo, his actions to that effect.
“Mom, dad, it’s not a phase!!! Chest holes are totally cool and everyone else has them!! GAWD, you don’t even understand me!!!”
Basically, until someone actually puts an explanation to it, assume Zovaal’s just a rebelious and angsty kid, lashing out at his parents’ for forcing him to conform to any measure of societal norms.
I assume you’re making a reference to the adventure guide description of the Prototype Pantheon boss, which was changed on the PTR.
The first iteration of the immortal council was not put into use because their ideals were too extreme. With the enemy at the gate, Lihuvim has little choice but to reactivate these dangerous prototypes.
Here’s the new description.
Bereft of the cosmic spirits of the Eternal Ones, these incomplete host bodies can only carry out their base directives without mercy or compassion. With the enemy at the gares, Lihuvim has little choice but to activate these dangerous prototypes.
To put it short, he’s unhappy that the game isn’t rigged for him to win so his plan is to do the ultimate kick over the table move.
Some of the dialogue used by the proto-types still imply that they are still extremists.
…ah.
well then.
Zovaal himself for sure was half baked at best as internal conflicts over the nature of the expansion were ongoing even after it was released, so… yeah.
Zovaal is shown to desire to bring Eternal Torment to reality once he has killed everything and starts over from scratch:
Dausegne, the Fallen Oracle – Dominated by the Jailer, Dausegne leads the Mawsworn in a battle to gain control of the Forge of Afterlives. The Jailer plans to use its power to unleash an eternity of torment upon all of reality.
He’s simply unhappy that he is barred from torturing everything in existence! He wants to kill the 5 other Cosmic Forces just so that he can have enjoy eternity torturing everything he creates!
He was a Judge and he was infact a Hanging Judge who enjoyed his work too much and was displeased that he was denied permission to sentence everything in existence to Eternal Torment!
Fun Fact: The Spells from his Raid Encounter Datamined show his Spells as mixing the Blue Domination Death Magic(which Gorak Tul is stated to have introduced to the Drust) and the Rainbow Domination Death Magic together!
Zovaal is like a cross between the Drust and Mawsworn mixing both flavors of Domination together! Mawsworn utilize the same Domination that Frostmourne infected Uther with(infact the Forsworn Kyrian get their Domination directly from Uther) while the Drust seem to use the same Domination used by the Helm of Domination.