A good antagonist needs charisma, motivation, stage presence, a sense of danger that isn’t just shooting laser beams or punching the Good Guy’s Strongest Guy to the ground and, above all, a clear internal logic to why they are striving for their goals. Raszageth fills most of these while Iridikron, to me, only has his visual design.
To compare, Raszageth’s danger isn’t that she’s a big strong angry dragon (although that makes her powerful), her danger was that she had knowledge, a plan and resources to unleash more of her kind onto Azeroth.
Iridikron is just vagueposting about the Void, which could be like half of Azeroth’s inhabitants. Boring, terrible, he’s on the list. Boo.
Basically he is to Deathwing what the primalists are to the twlights hammer.
More or less the same but with non of the established motives to make them compelling or interesting.
Edit:
Actually there is one thing the primalists did which I liked.
while the faction as a whole was bare bones, the individual leaders and named members had in some cases very compelling motives for joining, the night elf primalists leader in the centur plains for instance, had a motive and more thought put behind her than the main antagonists of that zone.
If we’re to take the theory/suggestion that TWW was originally meant to encapsulate the entire Worldsoul Saga in one - that is, ending with the Last Titan, then Iridikron would be showing up in 11.2, one assumes. His beef always was more with Titans while Xal’s was Void, so him waiting in the wings makes sense, and that’s not too bad. Vagueposts a bit in DF, shows up again to cap the next expansion. Reasonable time split.
As it is, he’s now set up for 13.0(?), which is a good distance away…but who knows if the plans will still see him return or not?
The consensus seems to be that the problem with the new protagonists is they don’t seem to be getting enough foreshadowing or build-up.
Especially when that build-up is dislodged into the timeskip periods, such as between SL and Dragonflight, or during however long Garrosh was in the alternate Draenor pre-crossover.
It’s what we’re not shown more than anything else, which makes it hard to understand the villains’ perspectives and motivations.
As an example -
I don’t think there was any hint at any point that the Scourge acted as the expression of a master greater than the Lich King, and that Kel’thuzad was fully aware and a part of it.
Antagonists being shelved at the end of encounters or expansions are tradition, Iridikron might be the first one they straight up shoved through a portal with 0 buildup or fanfare in an isolated cutscene.
Yeah exactly, we beat him at the end of WoD, he gets shelved and dusted off for Legion.
Imagine there being a cutscene after Highmaul where Gul’dan gets on a boat and just leaves while saying “I have found the THING, ehehehe” and then he’s never mentioned again.
Be it due to a cycle of hatred, resources, religion, w/e. There’s plenty enough reasons, believable ones too. Grounded in the setting, in the past, and the best part? It’s evergreen!
You can have the faction villain ebb and flow. And while the two factions are busy killing and fighting one another, let already struck down/weakened villains slowly climb back up from the ground and then strike at the now exposed factions and the world, forcing an uneasy stalemate or a costly divergence of resources to deal with them.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
Edit: here’s some easy ideas after just 5 minutes of thinking
Alliance:
Council of 3 hammers: Civil war potential, and resource gathering / explorer’s league shenanigans.
Turalyon: Gets possessed by a naaru, convinced he must bring order and light to all of Azeroth, gets most of alliance on board to forcibly spread the faith around Azeroth, including Horde, leading to conflict.
Numerous border schisms in places like Arathi, Hillsbrad, Silverpine forest, Barrens, etc.
Nelves unable to let go of the past with Teldrassil, vengeance drives many to pursue war.
Horde:
Orcs are orcs. They just love pillaging and murdering. Won’t be hard to find potential candidates here.
Goblins will join literally any cause that has money in it, including war.
Baine will 100% not go to war, but Magatha could. Maybe a coup/climbing accident is in order?
Forsaken definitely have potential to kill some living. Just take out Calia and here we go.
Have all the trolls unite under horde, make the Horde under the Zandalari and Darkspear tribes go around the world to protect said tribes and their lands from the expanding alliance forces.
Make something happen to the Nightwell, Arcan’dor and the Sunwell so that the belves and nightborne turn into whiskey aunts and crackheads ready to suck mana out of anything that moves and is not a horde member, like vampires (all the way trying to maintain their regal posture).
There’s more I could write but that’s from the top of my head, all very easy to implement and do.
They don’t have enough lore. Simple as that. They don’t look like they’re a part of this world, people with clear origins, understandable motivations or goals that aren’t always “kill insert name” or “destroy everything in sight”. Even the Primalists might have worked if their propaganda included things like Earthen Ring’s ineptitude at cleansing areas damaged by the recent wars, the plights of the Outland, and, in the night elf case, going all-in on Teldrassil still not avenged and Elune abandoning her people…
Lei Shen got comparatively little - some questing in Kun-Lai as setup, bits and pieces elsewhere but ultimately his fleshing out was pretty minimal compared to the expansion as a whole. He wasn’t really a thing in Krasarang or Valley of the Four Winds or Klaxxiland, after all.
Meanwhile, the Jailer got an entire expansion all centred around him. Objectively, a lot more lore!
Part of that is that their scopes were different. Lei Shen was a ‘continent’ threat, the Jailer a ‘universe’ threat. Lei Shen got what he needed - a grounded backstory that set him up as a big bad that was a realistic threat (and an absolutely killer patch trailer).
The Jailer needed a lot more work (foreshadowing/buildup) and by definition couldn’t be ‘grounded’ on Azeroth which is the place we actually care about. And a lot of that work seemed to come in the form of “…and the Jailer was behind it all along!” which definitely didn’t help.
The Jailer might have been doomed from the start just because of how big a threat he was meant to be (impossible to add him into the universe at this stage without it seeming like it was pulled out of the butt from nowhere), but the Primalists definitely could’ve worked as they were with just a bit more about their origins and motivations.
This hypothetical Gul’dan found the secret to a long happy life: exiting stage right before 20 misfits can stab you to death.
Imagining Iridikron had all these plans laid out, stepped out to work on them while Xal’atath was doing her thing and then slowly read up more and more about all the stuff that the Champion of the Horde has been up to over the past two decades and just decides to call it quits after all. “Deathwing and the three remaining Old Gods? Two actual Titans??”
We’ll stumble across him sunbathing on a beach in Eversong during Midnight having given up his plans for an early retirement.
Think saying roleplayers wanting the world to be static is a bit obtuse tbh. Borderline willfully misleading too.
The Scourge are iconic because the stroyline involving them was beloved and told through an RTS and WoW; even if the end didn’t quite land too well.
Just think it’s a bit reasonable to ask for villains that aren’t pulled out of the back of the sofa couch and handed to you with “this guy is a machiavellian genius who orchestrated everything from you stubbing your toe on the skirting board to your dental appointment being delayed by 15 minutes.”
As said, Lei Shenn is liked despite being part of an expansion that was widely mocked at the time (we didn’t know how well we had it bros) because he is what he is. An emperor who wanted his empire back. Threatening and powerful. No weird subversions out of the blue or retroactive “the circle block goes in the square hole” to justify it.
There is also the fact that the majority of roleplay characters probably aren’t going to be involved in some of the newer villains while it’s easier to get them roped into dealing with older threats. I mean, it’s unlikely that Joe Bloggs the Alliance footman isn’t going to be on K’aresh taking the fight to Dimensius over tracking down gnoll warbands in league with a rogue Cult of the Damned necromancer.
Which kind of plays into how the Scourge, as an example, have always remained a focus.
Unrelated to the topic at hand but still
Legendary and Dungeon/Raid Mount Drops Increased by up to 10x - Collector’s Bounty Buff Preview - Wowhead News
killer?
bruh cho was spitting bars absolute 11/10 villain setup that we’ll never see again in wow i fear https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q51B6M70QBs Seasons change and tyrants die.
His fury spent in times gone by.
The thunder sleeps beneath kun lai…
Yeah. Sargeras, the Scourge and the Shadow Council were all peak. There was nothing wrong with the 3 major evils we had.
I don’t really see why its bad to want the 3 classic villain groups people actually know and have good lore behind them to be… the big 3 main villain groups of WoW. None of them have a need to vaguepost about how they’re being giga-evil to stop turbo-evil as well thankfully.
There were other evils littered in Vanilla and TBC and in pretty much any other expansion. Lord Valthalak, for example, is a pretty slick and long questline.
the office heat is clearly cooking me faster than I realised lol
