Helllllloooo and welcome everyone to a little BlizzCon discussion. This year Blizzard revealed all the stuff that was leaked before, and not much else. There was lots of padding and recap and repeat, but we did get some juicy stuff.
First, we got some new info about the Jailer. Or rather promis about new info about him. In case you are not playing WoW or not at level 50, we are talking about this guy:
Yep, he looks scary and has a deep voice. But that is pretty much the full extent of his villany. He was originally somebody else, but he betrayed his fellow death pantheon members by doing something so he now has to guard the Maw as the Jailer. Every soul entering the Maw makes him more powerful, which is a pretty major oversight. His end goal is unknown, but we assume he is bad, cause he looks like a bad guy, He wants to prove that death was not ment to be chained, whatever that might mean, and for that he needs four keys, one from each covenant leader, who are reluctant to give up their keys.
That's all we know. Oh and he was behind the Lich King and the Burning Legion because he needs a lot of dead souls to grow in power. Now this whole mystery villain with vague goals act can work in some cases. If you have a central villain and another one just chilling in the background pulling strings. Like Solus in Stormblood. Or if you want Lovecraftian horror, like with the Reapers in Mass Effect that only worked untill they took the center stage and the game revealed their origin and purpose.
Lastly if you want to deconstruct the fantasy genre or certain tropes, like the wise mentor (looking at you Jade Empire and Kotor II). But WoW isn't trying to be clever. It never did. It has always been generic high fantasy operating on Rule of Cool. And in stories like that, a bad guy like the Jailer does not work. We haven't even heard of the guy till 9.0. So for me it is fantastic news that we will learn about the Jailer's goals in 9.1. Maybe I will finally care.
Speaking of people I have a hard time caring about, Anduin will be undergoing some change. Good for him. So far he has been blandly idealistic, nice and strong in the Light. Doesn't sound like a compelling character all in all. And every drame he might have had was mostly explored in tie-in novels. But now he is undead (looking) and evil. Ooooh. Guess Hearthstone was right.
Considering all the bad he did so far was punch Wrathion once, this wasn't really a logical next step for his character. This was forced on him by Sylvanas and/or the Jailer for shock value. And it might not be more than that, considering he is not actually evil. In the patch cinematic it was the Jailer speaking through him. It was like Harbinger in Mass Effect 2. When the Jailer's control wasn't that strong, Anduin looked horrified at what he has done. He is obviously still struggling to be his old self. He will at the very least get back to normal when the Jailer dies. Of cours he will likely stay undead looking unless they pull out some very lame fairy tale bullshit. But what can we do with Zombie Anduin?
1. Be the new Jailer in a repéat of Illidan's fate at the end of Legion.
2. Be the new Lich King in a repeat of Bolva's fate at the end of Wrath.
3. Just carry on as if nothing happened.
4. Co lead the Forsaken with Calia as a colossal fuck you to Horde players.
Each has its own flaws and merrits. I would have left Anduin alone personally, but we'll see. Perhaps his character will benefit from this little episode. Much like the Jailer, he needed some reason to make us care. We'll see if this is it.
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