Meh I find him entertaining. I was hoping he would be somewhat of an anti-villain route with him but I guess not. Everywhere he shows up he totally wracks house, he doesn’t seem all that put off by anything we or the covenants do, and all his schemes work. Hell, we lost to him.
Personally I find Denathrius to be an overrated villain. I guess for me villain’s like him are a dime a dozen in Final Fantasy games.
Yeah about all he did to Azeroth outside some kidnappings was have the Mawsworn resurrect some Scourge lieutenants. Who were pretty instantaneously stomped into mush by rampaging packs of adventurers.
Allegedly the Scourge might be running rampant. We do see Lakeshire overrun. And he did incidentally cause that. But honestly given WoW’s approach to story recently I’m suspecting that’ll probably never be addressed.
That is exactly how I feel about Zooval. He is the bad guy because er… Blizz says so I guess. You know the saying of “show don’t tell”? Well if you never heard of that saying you are in good company because sure as heck the writers at blizz have no idea what “show don’t tell means”.
And deep down you have that feeling Blizzard may pull "all along Zooval was the good guy, trying to protect us from the real ultimate evil “The Super Jailer”…
What happen to the writing at blizzard, I mean seriously, I asked what the heck happened? Is it a management thing, you want to write X but management says to write Y? Are you burned out? Do you write and plan ahead or just going off the cuff? I mean seriously what the hell happened to the quality of story telling?
There was a time when I would proudly point to Warcraft (more to the RTS side but the MMO has had its good points as well) as proof that writing in video games could be as compelling as movies or books. But now, I look at writing produced currently and it is just so depressing how far the quality of writing has sunk.
I wish they would include Azeroth more in the story telling. We know that Lakeshire is having issues with the Scourge but why can’t we do something about it? Why can’t they do Scourge invasions in Azeroth like the zone invasions in Legion or BFA? I would even be happy if they had some NPC Scourge attacking city guards occasionally so we could at least feel something of a threat to Azeroth besides the big hole in the sky over Icecrown.
I liked how in Cata you could see the damage on Stormwind from Deathwing. Whenever you were in the city you’d be reminded of who you’re fighting against and when you went out in the world and he randomly flew over and roasted your character it made him feel like a real threat that was effecting the world and your characters.
Zovaal just doesn’t do that imo
Zovaal is a watered-down Sargeras; a being integral to the cosmic order who one day goes “The cosmos is flawed so I’m going to destroy it. Everyone else can join me or die.” Zovaal’s even been compared to a titan by the devs.
After that cinematic, I got a bit sympathetic for him. He did give Sylvanas something that was stolen from her - for good or ill. He seemed bummed out that Sylvanas didn’t want to come along, and he seemed to respect her to a degree. Which is something.
Usually when they are together, Zovaal is being a jerk to everyone else, while Sylvanas stands there. In the cinematic, their interaction was interesting because it was different, even if it was kind of dull. It added a touch of character to him. He even wise cracks as he walks off - maybe he learned some snark from hanging around Sylvanas.
But I guess I am not eager to bring him to justice. Garrosh, Kiljaeden, Archimonde, Arthas, Deathwing, Nzoth - they had clear objectives to thwart. Zovaal seems to want to end reality but also remake it and have everyone serve him? It seems like there is more to it maybe?
I don’t know exactly how to say it, but it is almost like the new cinematic showcased a different aspect of his personality, and so I am more interested in his story than before. I have been wondering where he comes from, why he is in that situation, what his goals are… but more because of how those things impacted the story. Now, I am more interested in the character, at least.
Not in the slightest.
Steven, you cannot redo Wrath of the Lich King. Stop trying to redo Wrath of the Lich King, Steven.
Make your own story please.
I will admit I am amused that the rest of the Death Pantheon trusted someone that looked like that enough to be betrayed.
BFA was very poorly developed! it was neither a war expa nor one of old gods.
they cut war content like war front barrens and nzoth content was not well developed.
You can blow up the multiverse but don’t you dare touch my future Battle.net balance.
The only time Zovaal has been compelling was in the last cinematic, but I couldn’t quiet put my fib er on why until, of all people, Taliesin’s interpretation of the character clicked for me.
Zovaal is not the ultra charismatic villain, or the mustache twirling villain. Zovaal is Skynet, he’s Hal 9000. Although it has come across poorly thanks to WoW’s story telling structure he is meant to be a cold and emotionless being who is ruthlessly efficient and brutally pragmatic. Everyone keeps comparing him to Thanos, but he’s actually Ultron (and not snarky MCU Ultron, actual replace all organic life with machines Comic book Ultron.)
Since he has finally gotten his true power back, I actually am curious to see what he is capable of doing. More than that, I want to know what flaw it is he sees in the creators design and how exactly he intends to fix it. (Is the flaw free will? Is it Life itself? Or is it something deeper than that?)
It may seem boring and trite, especially since the writers have weirdly kept him at a distance from the story to try and preserve some unneeded sense of ‘mystery’, but once you realize Zovaal is not meant to be super Arthas or even a mad Titan like Sargeras, he makes for an interestingly different kind of villain we haven’t really seen on the macro scale in WoW.
The thing is I could see something like that working. I played through the Mass Effect re-release having not revisited those games in ages, and I thought Sovereign (the first Reaper you encounter) was done better than I remembered. The certainty of this ancient beyond your reckoning machine was interesting. It speaks of the extinction of all advanced humanoid life as if it’s just the sun rising in the East. An inevitably thats happened an untold number of times.
And I think something like that could’ve worked for the Jailor. But I’m still so in the dark about the specifics of his plan and greviances that I feel more confused than threatened.
Since BFA Blizz has been writing stories that can only ever make sense retroactively. I haven’t forgotten how for months nobody was even sure why Sylvanas burned Teldrassil. Hell I’m still not sure why. No idea how one city is even a drop in the bucket when the Jailor is getting all the souls from all the dead in creation. And at the time it seemed like she did it in lieu of a snappy comeback.
And here we are again. Where I’m going to have to wait months to have any firm idea of what exactly is even happening in the story. And that’s just such a lame approach to narrative.
I saw the video you speak of and it bummed me out. Because 7.1 is basically when I returned to WoW. And I remembered having my mind blown by Argus appearing in the sky. I was really impressed. I’d not played since Wrath and it sure seemed like Blizz had gotten much better at in game storytelling. Planting and payoff done right. Just this literal hellworld looming over us, promising epic adventures soon.
Then we get to BFA and SL, and in addition to the patch content taking much longer to be released, I also have zero clue what’s going to happen next. Which is bad when I’ve months of spare time to kill. Just makes my interest wane.
And as for the Jailor - if next patch he was suddenly very jovial and upbeat we couldn’t say that was out of character. Because we know so little about him that nothing really can be. This isn’t intrigue it’s that damnable JJ Abrahm’s mystery box BS approach to storytelling. But as so far every mystery box has contained just another mystery box I’ll have to wait months to open, I’m so past caring about them.
The problem really is that unless the Warcraft-universe is incredibly small…we’re talking about potentially trillions of planets and worlds. Even if the Burning Legion was conquering and destroying dozens if not hundreds of worlds each day that would still only be a small drop in the cosmic bucket. The covenants must number in the trillions if not the quintillions. Even if the Shadowlands are only responsible for the “Azeroth galaxy”…there are still billions of planets with potentially millions of hospitable worlds.
And even then Teldrassil is nothing. The rampaging remnants of the Burning Legion are probably busy wiping out an entire planets as we speak.
It may very well be.
I don’t know what would be funnier: To imagine that the Warcraft-universe is so large that we have quintillions of kyrians and most of them probably don’t even know what’s going on right now, because Bastion is the size of an entire galaxy and the message hasn’t reached them yet…or that the Warcraft-universe is so comically small that the burning of a single tree and a few tens of thousand of casualties are actually super important.
I like that he’s actually succeeding.
A minor addition to why this character does not work IMO.
So, we have the post-raid cinematic. We are there, the players. And what does the Jailer do? I assume most people here saw it. So, what’s missing?
Stand as One
The Jailer says: A relic of the First Ones… responding to a mortal?! Impossible!
He knows really well that the PCs can do what he cannot. He knows that no matter what we’ll be able to “cancel” everything he could ever do, no matter how many “+” would the devs put in his description.
Denathrius tried to co-operate with us at least for a moment. And it’s known that the players for a few trinkets are up for many things.
Trader Ba’telk says: I am growing fond of these mortals. Many possess flexible morals. I can appreciate that.
Trader Ba’gor says: Not sure they would agree. They seem to believe they are the heroes of the story.
Trader Ba’telk says: Depends who is telling the story, does it not?
So, promice that Remornia is a waifu candidate, offer a cool mount, and here we go - ready to fulfil the OGs
C’Thun: You will betray your friends.
Y’Shaarj: You should kill them all. You must kill them all.
N’Zoth whispers: With every choice, you become more my servant.
But… even though the material to make it interesting can be found all the way to classic, we have… what we have.
The fact that that the devs had the biggest team, budget, approval for delay, no constrains, and will all the resources and the player support that is the best they could do… is rather concerning.
On a positive note, it makes it easier to quit the game.
Gift of N’Zoth
You are special in the eyes of N’Zoth. He sees all.
gl hf
I have to agree with the people who say Zovaal just comes off as the discount Sargeras, who Blizzard never put adequate set up into, and instead just tacked a lot of random plot threads of the past on saying it was so part of his grand plan.
Doesn’t help that our primary interaction with him in 9.0 was him yelling at us daily to get off his lawn or he’ll send his spot light to annoy us until we leave, and as an oblivious idiot who took weeks to realize we’d been rampaging around inside his home.
While I was cooking dinner after having just updated the image of zovaal’s wowpedia page I got to thinking more of what I would’ve wanted his appearance to look like: