I do agree the Dark McGuffin kinda defeats the point of trying to fight her.
It’s the “Hyperspeed Ram” all over again. Nothing in lore should be this powerful without strongly limiting how long it can be in the story. OG Dragonsoul was used in one raid, and only then on one boss. Then the entire line of aspects got depowered.
That’s true. They could have put a little more effort in than just handing her the magic disk because reasons.
Still, I prefer her to the primalists who were these supremely powerful bad guys that just popped into the story out of nothing.
Valid. They were definitely created as anti-dragon equivalents to our Aspects because there was nothing for them to fight otherwise.
Dude lol, you’re complaining the work wasn’t done to lay the path for her to become a major antagonist but it sounds like you’re cognizant that the work was done and you didn’t play it. There’s issues with Xal’atath, sure, I’ve pointed them out before, but lack of setup is NOT one of them
addendum: Khadgar wasn’t clueless about the Heart OR Xal’atath, and spent the entire Dark Heart questline inquiring into methods of defending against her because he understood she was a large threat. That’s why he went to Jaina and Alleria for input. I don’t think he’s dead, to be completely honest, because of his preparation for that fight, I’ll be very dissapointed if he is with the way it was done.
Per WoWhead, 42% of profiles did not complete that dungeon. Or at least don’t have the achievement for it.
This means that my not playing it is hardly a personal issue. No doubt plenty of people were left dumbstruck when she went full Thanos after knowing her as a dagger and then a spirit possessing a deceased night elf.
Was it there? Sure. Was it sufficiently advertised for something of this importance? I’d argue not at all.
So… Ignore all story points that build up a character and act like the character has no build up? Sounds good to me 
Seriously though. This can be done for literally any character in WoW. If you don’t play the previous entries or pay attention to the story surrounding the characters in that story, of course you’re not going to understand their motive. The difference between Xalatath and the Jailer, is that the Jailer only lasted one expac (a cut short expac at that) and had 0 build up, and also retconned EVERY VILLAIN IN WOW TO THAT DATE. Xalatath was not a retcon. She was an established character and they said hey, we need a character that has X goal for this story. Is there an established character that fits this bill? That’s what they said. They didn’t say “oh people liked this character so we’re gonna pull a random story out of our butt to make them fit” lol
But all in all, your reasoning comes down to, complaining to complain because you didn’t pay attention to the story. 
Also… They have an entire cutscene at the start of the expac to explain everything that has happened, and her getting the dark heart (the thing shown in said dungeon) was a part of that cutscene. So this is just another spot where you just chose to not pay attention to the story but blame blizzard for your own ignorance
That’s quite an assumption!
For the record, Xal’atath was the Artifact Weapon for Shadow Priests in Legion and had a key role in BfA in providing said weapon to be used against N’zoth.
You may not have liked BfA (and truthfully, Azerite armour sucked!) but a lot of people did, especially after playing the Xal’atath quest.
I don’t think shes the final boss
Someone else is the big bad
And that works for me
Also do we think she survives the expansion?
If you hate her she is doing her job as a vilain.
The jailer for example just left me totally cold but I want to see Xal burn alive
To the defense of the OP though, my guess is that Blizzard is aware that Xal wasn’t that well explained in the past few expansions.
Proof of that is that they never felt the need to do a « story so far » recap to introduce any other vilain in the franchise.
It’s not. A slide was shown at GDC 2024 and that expansion had the lowest subscribers up until Classic hit, and those subs were obviously playing Classic.
No, we know that Void Lords are way more potent and can’t easily enter our world. Xalatath doesn’t seem to have those issues - but I will say she’s most likely not an Old God herself. More like a Void entity meant to bring about the entry of the Void Lords to our reality.
Whatever she is she’s unique. She has reality bending powers like the Scarlet Witch and time traveling abilities in her shadow form.
I keep hoping
Even if you ignore the legion shadow priest story. You still had the bfa expansion had her story and no it wasn’t side story it was part of a raid. And part of the main story that explained how nzoth even came to seed his agents all through azeroth. There was plenty of signs to see. But you can’t tell a person that chooses to close it’s eyes to see what’s in front of them.
“I mean Blizzard was pushing that some Trolls created an Old God.”
Could be wrong here but if you’re referring to G’huun it was the Titans that created them. Trolls just started worshipping them/working for them.
Moving over to Xal’atath Spriests spent all of Legion pumping her fulla Artifact Juice and I would completely believe she just conveniently pretended she used up her power with the other Legendary objects when we purged Sargy’s pigsticker in Silithus. Even if she didn’t hold onto that massive power-up she was already incredibly powerful and she was handed a one of a kind item infused with even more bonkers power.
Spriests also carried her around meeting Dalarans most important people and interacting with it’s security systems so I don’t have a hard time believing she was capable of escaping detection while sabotaging all of it (which she did). I think she’s characterized well and has been set up rather nicely in comparison to the absolute pulled from the ether pick that was the Jailor.
If you wanna personally dislike her I can’t really stop you but for my part I can’t say she’s poorly written at all so far.
let me guess because its a female villian?
Them? Them who? And why would the Titans create an enemy?
Xal’atath is poorly written.
This thread is a perfect example of why people need to do and READ all the text around main AND sidequests…and to stop arguing when those that do and did are educating you