Once again, the final boss of the expansion achieved nothing.
Just like the Jailer before him, Dimensius did nothing and had exactly 0 impact on the story. Wait, I just skipped an expansion. Who was Dragonflight’s main vilain again? What did they achieve?
One of the most powerful entities we’ve ever had to deal with, and he just sat there in its prison until we arrived, beat him down and that’s pretty much it. So lame.
Why are Blizzard so afraid of killing important characters and destroying cities again?
The last time I felt threatened by a World of Warcraft vilain was back in Cataclysm, when Deathwing used to roam the world and destroy everything in his path:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o4hMiDMyko
What happened?
This world is stale.
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I was actually thinking about this a few months ago, that when you think about it, we always in the conflict with something/someone and we always come out on top.
Of course, the developers want to make a game where the player feels rewarded, and it’s achievable and yada yada yada.
What I thought about and would be, in my opinion, something which would break the mold of what we are currently seeing with these expansions, is that a villain appears which is so powerful that we can’t kill him “YET”.
He/She/It kills everyone (we fight him at the beginning of the expansion and not just a cinematic) and the world is almost destroyed or is it and some titan transfers our souls somewhere else etc, and we reverted to level 1, but as for example, our son or our daughter and we continue their legacy!
Even easier to pull off would be:
- The vilain kills a major character fighting alongside us, like Thrall, during the final fight.
- We defeat the vilain, but we arrive too late to stop his plan he succeeds at detonating a bomb in Ironforge or something, completely destroying the area and causing a ton of permanent damage to the world.
I guess you can come up with plenty of ways for these characters to do something.
It doesn’t have to happen in the raid either, they could absolutely cause havoc during the questing phase.
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We destroyed Dimensius in his infancy basically.
WoW has never had stakes.
We already know we’ll beat the raid bosses. And if we don’t outright kill them, they’ll flee or be captured or something like that (whatever’s needed for the story).
Do you think we won’t win this ‘saga’? 
There are no stakes.
And that’s fine with me. I’m just trying to enjoy the journey. 
Yes, that’s the final outcome obviously, but that doesn’t mean the world can’t have stakes.
It’s irrelevant. We knew we’d defeat the Legion when Legion first launched.
But the pre-patch event, where Tirion, Varian and Vol’jin died? That was a great way to give the players a sense of dread and impending doom that has never been replicated since.
We knew we’d win eventually, but we also couldn’t tell which sacrifices would have to be made to secure this victory.
The only stake that WoW has is whether the plug will be pulled from the servers sooner rather than later.
Hence; no stakes.
That’s not irrelevant. Even death is not permanent. We’ll just try again.
No stakes. Whatsoever.
NPCs have stakes, I suppose… They can die (whether or not permanently).
But for us, the players, there are no stakes.
And again: I don’t mind that.
“Knock knock” Who’s there.
Dimensius.
Dimensius who?
As soon as they revived Dimensus , which was a 5 man quest in tbc that you could solo , it already felt off .
What’s next , Stiches gets a power up and is the final, boss of Midnight ?
Surely he was the mastermind behind the scourge all along .
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Im willing to give the devs the benefit of doubt since its the first 3 expansion saga.
Im sure they’ll kill off some characters by the end.
My money’s on the 1 armed chick dying before the final fight which motivates anduin to do stuff.
That one character that nobody likes?
When are they killing Thrall, Baine, Jaina, or anyone actually relevant?
Im thinking they’ll go with the basic story formula.
A new character gets introduced, you get to know them, they die so that the next entry starts off from clean slate.
Kinda like a simpsons episode, you get to ignore or even forget story bits you dont like & bring back bits you do like.
I agree that expansions like WOTLK were strong because the main adversary was there from the beginning, and hung over everything so you had a sense of threat. I don’t like the bait and switch where it’s Xalatath then suddenly it’s a boss just brought in for season 3.
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In fairness the dragon last expac did that too. I remember people complaining that they died doing a world quest and how it was super unfair. 
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Speaking as a vampire I am glad at the absence of stakes.
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How about Xal’atath?
We spend a big part of TWW trying to keep that void McGuffin away from her because it would make her so amazingly powerful, now she has it, empowered with what’s left of Dimensius to boot, and her first big attack in Silvermoon is fended off in levelling quests.
That kind of lacks that “major villain” oomph, IMO…
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Ye the whole raid was cool but there was little impact to anything. It could have easily been that the battle ended with a huge trump tear in the sky or something
Yeah but
TBC Illidan big bad done badly he has 1 quest lol but we sort him
Lich King… good story we end him
Cata same as above but needed more lore and backstory in game (I read the books)
MoP start of the we don’t get to end the villain a cheating NPC does 
WoD Can’t remember Gul’dan runs away tho
Legion we finish it.
BFA can’t remember lol
Shadowlands meh
She’s not supposed to be a villain. Blizzard never designed her to be one. She’s filler to sell expansions or to string along some “story” dreamt up by a bored intern during their lunch hour that has been done before, except this time it’s a new “evil boss we should be wary of because spooooooooky agenda!” waves fingers making ghost noises.
What SHOULD have happened in the Omega Vault was that Xalaprat released Dimensius, he promptly laughs and said “hey, thanks for releasing me, now have fun with these adventurer types while I go cause chaos in Azeroth” then Xalaprat finally gets her comeuppance for her antics the last THREE expansions and shown to be the not quite so powerful entity that she thinks.
But if things go the way I suspect, and given Blizzard’s zeal to string out “female leads” because it sells expansions, Xalaprat will somehow manage once again to “manipulate” events and players will somehow be asked to again “sit with shocked face as Xalaprat betrays us. Again.”
Such is Blizzard’s writing these days, in fact such is Blizzard’s writing for a long time.
Seriously. was anyone THAT surprised when Xalaprat “suddenly” went bad again…
In fact I fully expect Blizzard to once again raise that beaten to a pulp dead (irony intended) horse called Sylvanas and milk her popularity with Xalaprat, maybe Sylvanas can bomb Orgrimmar this time. She has a thing for wrecking her own strongholds, as every competent and successful military planner throughtout history has done.
Xalaprat the master of manipulation and Sylvanas the master of tactics.
How would the universe survive…
Edit Disclaimer. I don’t hate the character Xalatath as a character. She had, and still does, have great potential. I’m just tired of seeing Blizzard once again showing no signs of creativity and design of a character outside of the same tired old cliches that theyve relied on for at least 5 expansions
There havent been any stakes since forever since the world never changes and we always win. I don’t see why they can’t have us lose for once.
We were too late, BOOM! K’aresh is gone (lore-wise) and now Dimensius is moving to Azeroth.
Intro to the next expansion and half the world is shattered into the void or whatever.
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