There are a lot of good answers here. My own criticisms boil down to:
The story in Danuser’s era (as far as I can determine the fuzzy boundaries between eras) chases dramatic scenes/moments, sacrificing everything else in that pursuit - previous lore, character consistency, story stability, etc, to the self-destructive point where the dramatic scene either doesn’t make sense or doesn’t matter.
A) Previous lore. So much previous lore was thrown out or undermined by shoehorning the Jailor into being the mastermind of everything. I’m okay with some retcons, but there’s a difference between not letting previous canon strangle the story and not bothering to tactfully weave the current story into the existing canon. It undermines the player’s investment in those previous storylines by saying that a) the complete emotional journey the player went through in that storyline was not true, b) the player’s successes were aktually just part of a villain’s plan, and c) some characters’ actions (like Kel’thuzad’s) in that storyline were all just pretend (or nonsensical). The overuse of retcons also undermines interest in current storylines by planting the thought that this story, too, could be yanked out from underneath them at any time in the future.
Retcons can serve a story well, but they incur a cost against the audience’s investment. If the result of the retcon recoups that loss and then some, it’s a success - like, say, the retcon to add the draenei, then all the draenei-related stories built on that retcon. But I feel that the Jailor’s retcon did not earn back that investment. The Jailor story - which sums up to “I have pulled the strings for eons to subjugate you because of reasons I won’t tell you about” - was not as interesting as the lost completeness of Arthas’ personal fall and defeat, of the Legion’s universal march of destruction for Sargeras’ twisted goals, of Sylvanas’ personal and yet Horde-bound determination to avoid death, of Elune’s uniqueness and mystery, etc.
B) Character consistency. The main characters have had years of time in the story spotlight; Years of actions and reactions, repeated character traits and growth into new traits - and this is meant to let the player feel like they know the character, and be invested in when they can see the character again and where the character is going next.
But when ‘next’ has little or no bearing with what came before, that sours the player’s investment with the story. Sylvanas the schemer, the clever general, the one who broke away from one deathly master already and will never be subjugated again - serving the Jailor because ‘the afterlife is unfair’ and not realizing the mind-controlling master of Domination might, y’know, do exactly what he’s always been doing and mind-control people when he wins? This wasn’t even some long con where she was planning on betraying him the whole time and just needed to serve him long enough to put her own plan into place? “I will never serve” is a good line, and that moment was no doubt the idea that the story was built around, but it was so thoroughly undermined by the stupid and contradictory scenario built around it that it earned its meme status.
c) Story stability. The story in a game exists to let the player know “where am I?” and “where am I going?” - to that end, the player needs to be able to guess/predict to some extent what might happen next based on what has happened. The clearest example is knowing who the final boss is - while Arthas’ frequent appearances during the levelling experience might be silly in that he always lets us go, there’s a reason he is the epitome of an expansion boss. We know who he is, what he’s doing, and therefore what we must be doing to stop him.
But so much of the BfA/SL stories were based on mysteries - who is the Jailor? Why is he doing this? Why is Sylvanas serving him? Why did he capture Anduin? And they take so long to answer, and the answers all-too-often were not worth the wait. Anduin is a shortcut to get close to Kyrestia, learned after one patch? Fine. The Jailor being the original Arbiter, learned two patches in? Okay, though it could have been revealed earlier to pick up the pace. The Jailor wanting to rewrite all of creation in order to fight… someone?.. learned after months and months? Not worth it. Sylvanas chose to serve the Jailor because the afterlife was unfair and she thought that Mr. Mind Control was going to be fair, learned after four years since her villain-ness started and only spelled out in an out-of-game book? Completely unacceptable.
Mysteries are fine to keep players engaged and looking forward to the next step, but they need to pay off quickly enough to keep the players interested rather than frustrated. This is especially tricky in a game that takes so long between ‘chapters’. There’s a reason good books - particularly mysteries and thrillers - are praised by saying “I couldn’t put it down”… but in a MMO, the player is forced to put the story down and wait weeks or months for the next plot development… and ~2 years for the conclusion. That conclusion being “come back in another 2 years and we might give you one more sentence to ponder” is not fun, not worth the wait, and not worth the investment in the original mystery.
The mystery focus, to me, calls back the good old “subverting expectations” line. Keep the audience guessing, keep them hooked. But I feel that it misses two main points:
- Predictability isn’t inherently bad just because it’s predictable. Predictability is only bad when the predictable option is boring. If people think that the story is angling toward something they like, they will not like it if that something is yanked away just to subvert their expectations.
- It isn’t the mere existence of a mystery that hooks the audience, but the chance of figuring out the mystery based on what came before or at least realizing the causal chain after-the-fact. If the mystery’s solution is random or could not have been guessed based on what was already given to the audience before the final reveal, it’s less fun than the moment of “Ohhhhh, that was it! I should have expected that!”
I could elaborate more on these points, but this is already a hefty wall of text so I’ll leave it for now.