Here is the short version of this: if you have seen the most recent part of the story where Zovaal talks to Bolvar (and how he specifically talks to him) I feel that it is the only good bit of characterization we have gotten out of him. I frankly haven’t liked anything from him besides that.
Read on if you want the longer version -
I feel like he is too impersonal, and that is putting it politely. I know what the writers are trying to do with this: they’re trying to make it seem like we, in Zovaal’s eyes, are insignificant. But instead it is making him come off as too stupid and too arrogant, and disconnected with reality.
This guy needs to make things personal between us. We’ve done more than a few very, very big things to dismantle his plans and to pose the biggest threat this guy has probably ever had to face with his plans.
The biggest examples of these threats we’ve posed to him are:
- Killing Arthas, then installing Bolvar as the Lich King.
- Prematurely ending the Fourth War and stopping the flow of souls he had from that war.
- Using the destruction of the Helm of Domination to invade his realm, which in turn allowed us to create portals between our realm and the Shadowlands.
- To add insult to injury, one of these portals is in the middle of “HIS” realm.
- Alerting every major power to his plans.
- Killing (or disabling) important allies to his plans.
- Taking souls back from The Maw while coming and going to his realm as we please.
And now we are using his ace in the hole for our personal use - The Runecarver.
I could go on and on. But the bottom line is that the way he talked to Bolvar in that last part of the story is basically how he should be addressing us from this point on. He should be angry, insulting, and telling us about our failures: he should be demoralizing us.
Not playing with Anduin’s damned sword as Sylvanas is telling him that he’s just suffered a horrific defeat. Sylvanas should know what has happened to those that have crossed us in the past, and from her he should know that his own existence is at stake now.
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Syl and the jailer are just too high of their own villainy supply.
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Sylvanas should NOT be like that: she’s been with us since the very beginning of World of Warcraft. She knows what the adventurers are capable of. And has said so over and over again.
And it is not just her. We killed Helya, one of the Jailer’s biggest allies, in her own realm. Before we went on to kill a freaking death titan.
“What manner of creatures ARE you??”
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Well remember Syl has been getting power ups from the jailer and probably believes she’s beyond us now, but it really doesn’t make sense she should be like “Yah jailer, you shouldn’t be so flippant with those murder hobos. They’ve killed any and every threat that came their way.”
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Probably looking for a similar thing they did with Sargeras. Probably less effectively, but they do indeed have an example of a villain that works while being quite impersonal.
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I feel like they could keep him seeing us as insignificant with still giving us a way to feel like there is more of a personal connection to him. There isn’t a reason there aren’t more quests out there that give us insight into his past, his plans for the future, etc… There’s no reason we couldn’t try to do something in some zone and get thwarted at the last moment by some Mawsworn who shouts, “The Jailer sends this warning, Maw-Walker: you’re not untouchable. Don’t think for a moment that you’re safe when you leave the Maw. His reach is greater than you know.”
Well difference being sargeras has much much more development and knowledge about him and his goals.
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They tried, with that lot of “kidnapping your leaders” i guess you should feel offendend and suddenly every interaction with him is different, however for the life of me i dont care if he takes anduin and jaina, i would leave them there if i could
Well also he treats Anduin as more useful then people able to escape the maw.
well at least im looking forward for lich king anduin raid fight, at least it will be entertaining.
its ridiculous they’re heading this way but whatever ill enjoy what i can.
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Forgive me for not reading your entire post (I returned in late December and haven’t played through everything so I’d like to avoid as many spoilers as possible), but I wanted to chime in and add that I’ve said this since he was revealed.
Part of this is because he has no depth or complexity. He’s about as straightforward of a 2-D cartoon villain we’ve had since Deathwing.
Another part is that he’s had next to no mention prior to Shadowlands, and it’s hard to believe he was pulling the strings all along as a result.
I’d rather them create new antagonists like the Jailer (even if they are cardboard cutouts) than convert beloved iconic characters into them.
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Well then, it seems like there are only 2 possibilities then.
- His master plan is the exact same thing as Arthas’s, in which we defeat every challenge he sets before us. So he can convert us into his perfect weapons.
or…
- He is not actually our real enemy, or final boss of the Expansion, and something worse is hiding in the Shadows.
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Except Arthas actually was apart of our journey and constantly laid tests personally before us, Zovaal is incredibly disinterested so it makes him boring.
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Arthas also had interesting interactions with us for us to discover. In Howling Fjord there’s a quest for the Alliance where we cross to the spirit realm for a quest and you can come across Arthas talking to a valkyr. Get too close and Arthas would notice you, grab your spirit form and kill you instantly.
Hell even Deathwing would swing through and roast everything in a zone. We need more interactions like this.
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Yeah, I think that would be cool too.
An idea just came to mind, earlier in Shadowlands, Mawsworn Val’kyr would re-raise, old ICC bosses, for us to swarm and loot, but I think it would have been awesome if those “former bosses” would have fled and resurfaced elsewhere on Azeroth rather than just around Icecrown.
Imagine if Putricide, rose up again, but resurfaced just outside of Orgrimmar, and raised, and crafted a small army Abominations made from Orc corpses to rampage around. Sure we have green, spikier ones in Maldraxxus, but what if a massive squad of them were assaulting one of the gates of Orgrimmar? What if he was doing this in the Night Elf territories, using Night Elf corpses?
What if Lana’thel and the Princes rose again. and appeared just outside of Quel’thalas. and Stormwind, and were kidnapping elves, and bolstering the ranks of the San’layn?
What if some forces, both PC and NPC, had to deal with that until the whole Shadowlands debacle was resolved?
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I just what really gets me is how were running around Torghast, accessing the Runecarver, have rescued prisoners ordered place within, and yet seems to only responds to us when we pissed him off enough in the Maw. And even that feels as something he has to do, over actually wanting to do it.
So yeah I don’t feel that emotional investment in fighting against the Jailer, like I was with past WoW villains. Hell, I feel more invested in wanting Magatha to return to the story so I can kill her to avenge Cairne … and the fact I was forced to have her as a Shaman champion in Legion.
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He would have been much more engaging if they had nixed the evil for evils sake stuff.
His stoyline could be compelling - He wants to remake the cosmos because it is fundamentally flawed and unjust.
We could have a whole story of what he thinks is just, wthat the things he does really is for the greater good. Perhaps there could even be major characters, or the story written in a way where even we as characters SEE HIS POINT OF VIEW.
Instead Blizz had to stick with the “evil” theme.
They basically should have modeled the jailer on what they did with the forsworn. You can understand what the forsworn are talking about, with the mind wipes and re-education camps of the Kyrian.
But the way the wrote the jailer, he just comes off as a big bad evil dude who wants to kill everyone and doesnt actually CARE about anything and is just using the arguments made as an excuse to murder everyone.
Much more interesting story if there is inner-turmoil and gray areas.
Blizzard is bad at writing stories.
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Well a villain that’s evil for the sake of evil can still be engaging, those types of villains however require engaging with the player in order to create a sense of gravity.
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i should feel its all his fault, its all the jailer’s fault he is supposed to be the bigger bad but, im not engaged he doesnt feel threatening, maybe its because of the scale? a person is a tragedy and a million a statistic and our minds cant just fathom all the things he is doing, however this is not our fault this is a mistake on the presentation of what kind of villain he is.
Legion started strong, gul dan screwed us and personally killed varian, krosus killed tirion, vol jin died, now this was personal they killed beloved characters, kil jaden and sargeras had it coming even if we didnt killed him but argus instead, we had axes to grind against those guys even if kil jaden and argus were somewhat generic they still had lore behind their backs to make the fight somewhat meaningful, specially because of the heroes at your side, you had kadghar helping you screw gul dan you had illidan vs kil jaden you had the pantheon vs sargeras and argus.
I expect the jailer to be the same we wont kill him directly but will help to dethrone or kill him however he lacks the background the other characters do have, this is another problem with bfa they kept secret(or he didnt even exist at the time) that the jailer was writing sylvanas’ checks so you dont feel he is in control and why several presentations of sylvanas felt like an a-pull.
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Yeah, like Ganondorf from Zelda. He’s evil for evil’s sake but he’s also a ton of fun because of how much the guy just enjoys being evil. Or to bring it more to WoW, Gul’dan was like that too.
The Jailer is not that. He’s boring. He isn’t even a character.
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