I’ve played through most of the campaign, and I still don’t know why the Jailer is our villain. I get it, Sylvannas kidnapped the faction leaders and did a lot of bad stuff back in BFA; but what has the Jailer actually done? It feels like I, as a character, have only been told he is a bad guy. Sure, the Maw looks bad and generally evil but my understanding is he was jailed there. Has there been anything in game that discusses what he did? I hate when I get told something is bad without basis or being shown why.
Honestly kinda over the generic villain route, which is why I ask this, because I don’t feel particularly energized to fight him. I’ve seen some fun theories that maybe he’s be wrongfully jailed this whole time, and our true enemies are those who seem to be helping us. Who knows, I don’t know if Blizzard is brave enough for a truly morally ambiguous storyline.
Despite them being bitter eternal adversaries, Arthas put in a good word for her. Or maybe the opposite, he told the Jailer to torment her further by arranging her ‘deal.’
It was established at some point (prepatch? Maw intro?) that the Jailer wants to devour Azeroth’s worldsoul, which would naturally put us at odds with him.
There’s a lot of information we don’t yet have (chiefly the circumstances surrounding Zovaal’s banishment to the Maw), but when you’ve made it your goal to eat the soul of a world, its inhabitants are going to go against you as a matter of self-preservation.
I must have missed this. That’s at least a start, this whole time I was left wondering why he was doing any of the stuff he was. Hopefully they expand more on him as the content progresses.
There are a lot of lingering questions surrounding his motivations - the other members of the Pantheon of Death suggest he betrayed them somehow, which is what earned him banishment to the inescapable Maw.
On the other hand other players (Denathrius and the Mawsworn kyrian leading the prepatch effort whose name I forget) suggest Zovaal was the one who was betrayed, and is only trying to reclaim what is rightfully his.
What the truth is remains to be seen, but either way tryin’ta eat Azeroth’s worldsoul is gonna put us at odds with him.
He was jailed there, but currently he controls it, which means all the suffering happening there right now is on his head.
If he had reformed it once taking over he might have some sympathy, but right now it’s a hell because he made it that way. No one else is responsible for how he rules his own domain.
You’re right, we haven’t really been given enough information because we have only dealt with him directly once. This first section of Shadowlands seems more about learning of the different Covenants and such, growing to empathize with them and thus be against the Jailor (since he wants to crush them, or at least the current iteration of them, in order to change the existing structure).
We get to see his realms in Torghast and the Maw, but in doing so we are really just dipping our toes into what he has to offer, and see what happens to the soul fodder that ends up here, which is eternal torment in a dozen different forms.
As for his reasons why all of this is going down, we don’t really know the whole story. We got bits and pieces, but it seems as though the whole picture will be coming later. It was the same with the Sargeras back when he was introduced.
Even if the Jailer was wrongfully imprisoned back then (which I’d say is probably likely), there’s nothing morally ambiguous about the stuff he’s doing now. He wants the Maw to consume all of reality and have Death wipe away everything else.
Yeah, I’m not going to lie, I have a serious issue with the whole “he did unspeakable things and, as a result, we banished him. So please side with us” approach.
It’s a bit like where we initially side with Denathrius only 5 seconds later to be told he’s actually the bad guy and given some clear examples. But here, we’re always in the room when it’s mentioned the Jailer needed to be banished which naturally begs the question about WHY was he banished. Yet no one is asking it to my frustration. This one of the first logical questions you’d ask.
Putting Sylvanas 5,000 feet away, maybe the Jailer is actually the good guy and was wrongly banished because everyone else is corrupt? Unlikely, I know, but we just don’t know because everyone is just telling us to take their word for it, which I find deeply problematic.
If I had to bet, I guess if the writers wanted to do a “twist,” it would involve the Jailer actually being wrongly banished. I think that would cheapen the story tremendously, but it could reasonably serve as one explanation why this isn’t explained up front. On the other hand, it may just be they want to reveal why at a later date which, to me, is a bit lazy, but ok.
He’s helped destroy the Helm of Domination and got the Scourge all riled up.
He helped kidnap the various leaders that went into the Maw.
He tried to kill us.
He’s helped perpetuate the plan to throw the Shadowlands into decay. Involving building the Forsworn, getting Maldraxxus fighting each other/invading Bastion (though they failed hard), forming the enemies in Ardenweald, and encouraging the Drought started in Revendreth before having Sire Dath use it all for his ends.
Encouraged Sylvanas to kill more, though you can debate how much she needed this to do everything she did.
Has been torturing numerous innocent souls for years.
We see all these things, they’re very obvious.
Only vaguely that he ‘betrayed’ the other Eternal Ones. They might be vague on purpose for some reveal. Personally I don’t want that and would find it dumb. In the same way I hated working for Sire Dath.
I had the horrifying realization that this motivation is literally a requirement for all villains from now on, as it is the only thing that can explain Azeroth being relevant to cosmic forces over the other trillions of planets that exist.
From here on out, all villains must want to destroy (or otherwise ruin, corrupt, or do something unsavory to) Azeroth’s world soul for some reason or another.
EDIT: bolded, to prevent trolls from purposefully misunderstanding in bad faith the entire point of this post, which is apparently necessary.
Well, they can always make the villains locally sources as well. Originally in like Vanilla, the Old Gods were just here for no reason. Deathwing could have just been crazy. So on.
Basically the same for the purpose of this discussion.
That’s the thing, though; it’s kind of hinted, although not outright said, that the Legion has been quite busy burning most of the rest of the universe to cinders. Azeroth is likely to be the only remaining world-soul left in all of creation, and it’s certainly hinted at being the most powerful, more so than the entirety of the Pantheon (including Sargeras) combined. A source of life that bright is bound to be a target for people who follow the advice of Warmaster Horus to “let the galaxy burn”.