The interesting vilains are dealt with too quickly, giving room for boring ones.

[Aodlop.1907]

WOW's story is underwhelming because the vilains are generic, boring and all around just not interesting.

In GW2, we have very compelling characters like Ankka, Jormag and Joko, except they get deleted in what feels like a rush so we can get to the next thing - which is supposed to be more exciting, but isn't.

That's too bad. Huge wasted potential, over and over again. But hey, we have void lords now I guess...

Edited April 19, 2022 by Aodlop.1907

[maxwelgm.4315]

To be fair, some characters do get a lot of Lore time, but not much direct screentime. Joko and Jormag are definitely two that do not enough screentime to justify how much they are set up. The fact there's a lot of lore surrounding them is probably what makes it all the more frustrating, because it makes it seem like the payoff was weak. So it happens that we do get a lot of story beats that relate to them, like the entirety of the DRMs for Jormag or half of PoF and LS4 for Joko, but there's not enough direct conflict that should be there to make it seem like it satisfies how much you saw of them "elsewhere", if that makes any sense.

 

Compare that to Kralkatorrik who was probably the Elder Dragon and made its presence felt directly at all times. We had close encounters with Kralk in more than one LS episode and even the small details like Kralk being on the other side of every Rift opened across LS4 up to Dragonfall were there to make us know they are directly opposing us. Mordremoth and Scarlet were maybe the only ones who came close to this much direct involvement in the story.

 

I don't know if it's a good thing to always have prolonged villain arcs though: Ankka has a nice arc and her story is interesting in view of the rest of the game, but it's also not something I'd see going forward for long - she was self destructive from the start and a purely nihilistic villain was only interesting in the context she was put into. Having it go for too long would actually devalue her character IMO. What I think is the core of the issue here is not that characters are or aren't boring, but rather that your direct involvement with certain villains on the story is very disjointed with how much lore they have - something that is worse with villains that come from GW1, kinda supporting my argument they'd need more direct screentime to have a satisfying payoff.

[Dadnir.5038]

For season 1 we had scarlet to bother us for quite a few months and a lot of peoples didn't want to see something like this happen again (I mean, people were sick of scarlet. She was receiving quite a lot of hate from the playerbase). Maybe those villains have such a low screentime due to the lessons the devs learnt from Scarlet or it's simply the way the LS episodes and x-pack episodes work compared to how LS1 worked.

 

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

6 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

For season 1 we had scarlet to bother us for quite a few months and a lot of peoples didn't want to see something like this happen again (I mean, people were sick of scarlet. She was receiving quite a lot of hate from the playerbase). Maybe those villains have such a low screentime due to the lessons the devs learnt from Scarlet or it's simply the way the LS episodes and x-pack episodes work compared to how LS1 worked.

The thing is that people just didn't like Scarlet. It had nothing to do with the consistency or duration of Scarlet popping up - she just wasn't well received from day 1. Whether the argument is "boring" or "villain sue" or something else, there was just not a lot of interest in Scarlet's character when she showed in the Queen's Jubilee / Clockwork Chaos release, and the short story about her only hurt the reaction further.

Edited April 19, 2022 by Konig Des Todes.2086

[ugrakarma.9416]

Ankka wasn't compelling. 

Ppl going mad because they see too much violence in some crazy journey, then reach conclusion "this world must suffer", is a bit cliché.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

39 minutes ago, ugrakarma.9416 said:

Ankka wasn't compelling. 

Ppl going mad because they see too much violence in some crazy journey, then reach conclusion "this world must suffer", is a bit cliché.

It is a trope for sure, but tropes tend to exist because people enjoy them. I think they did Ankka well, personally.

And to be fair: Ankka isn't "this world must suffer" but rather "we must start the world from scratch because trying to fix it only messes things up more". Similar direction but different motivation.

[Kalavier.1097]

1 hour ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

It is a trope for sure, but tropes tend to exist because people enjoy them. I think they did Ankka well, personally.

And to be fair: Ankka isn't "this world must suffer" but rather "we must start the world from scratch because trying to fix it only messes things up more". Similar direction but different motivation.

 

And a bit of "You played god by killing the dragons and everything got worse. Stop playing god."

[Wolfb.7025]

2 hours ago, ugrakarma.9416 said:

Ankka wasn't compelling. 

Ppl going mad because they see too much violence in some crazy journey, then reach conclusion "this world must suffer", is a bit cliché.

Yeah I felt ankka just came out of nowhere just to be the VIllian of the Week. She got too much credit and relevance to the plot for someone that was basically nonexisting before. It felt like if the Icebrood Construct suddendly became plot relevant and really threatening at the start of IBS and then boom, no more.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

I no longer follow lore and story a lot. I dedicate my play time in the WvW cornerstone. 

 

But if I had to say something about villains, that'd be the lack of Bangar. 

Imagine him, as a prisoner, still giving out info about a disturbance in the dragon energy. Like some fallen jedi lol. I think he was too good to be used only for a couple of eps consistently. Perhaps ankka would be fleshed out more if she collided with an actually major villain like Bangar, say, when she captures a member of DW. 

 

I don't know just my thoughts of what I would want to see. Also, always felt like anet didn't want to give proper personalities to the Elder Dragons even after their death. Some dragons we have fought 3 times lol (their energies), would it Hu t if they spoke a bit about their role/goals? 

If anything the most potential comes from the mists and it has become merely a form of vacation resort for people who want to jump into tyria and cause problems, not the extra dimensional space that it's meant to be with higher entities interacting meaningfully with the world and important characters. 

Like Aurene getting weird dragon visions from the fallen Elder Dragons about the world. I don't know, meh. 

[Valisha.8650]

22 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

Ankka isn't "this world must suffer" but rather "we must start the world from scratch because trying to fix it only messes things up more". 

Then Ankka is 100% right, and she's not a villain at all.

[Kalavier.1097]

2 hours ago, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

I no longer follow lore and story a lot. I dedicate my play time in the WvW cornerstone. 

 

But if I had to say something about villains, that'd be the lack of Bangar. 

Imagine him, as a prisoner, still giving out info about a disturbance in the dragon energy. Like some fallen jedi lol. I think he was too good to be used only for a couple of eps consistently. Perhaps ankka would be fleshed out more if she collided with an actually major villain like Bangar, say, when she captures a member of DW. 

 

 

 

GW2 doesn't dump random, unrelated plot points/information into the storylines. We don't know how the pale tree is doing because she hasn't been relevant to the current plots, etc.

Bangar was last seen being carted to a hospital. He didn't have relevance to the storyline of EoD.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

On 4/19/2022 at 6:39 PM, Wolfb.7025 said:

Yeah I felt ankka just came out of nowhere just to be the VIllian of the Week. She got too much credit and relevance to the plot for someone that was basically nonexisting before. It felt like if the Icebrood Construct suddendly became plot relevant and really threatening at the start of IBS and then boom, no more.

You mean like the Fraenir, who created the Icebrood Construct? 😄

[Ellye.9123]

That's why I hope the goal for the next bits of content is to scale down a bit and give us more local and personal threats.

We already dealt with pretty much all known world-ending, cataclysmic threats around.  Suddenly making one appear out of nowhere now, just for us to kill it in a couple weeks, would be lame.
So it's probably better to scale down and slow the pace a bit, let our character deal with smaller fish, perhaps spend some time going around the world and seeing the result of all we did, etc.

All the while they can start laying down hints and pieces of a new large threat on the horizon for later.

[Raknar.4735]

On 4/19/2022 at 10:02 PM, ugrakarma.9416 said:

Ankka wasn't compelling. 

Ppl going mad because they see too much violence in some crazy journey, then reach conclusion "this world must suffer", is a bit cliché.

Agree, imo Ankka was rather bland and uninteresting. I didn't care for her charater at all.

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

On 4/21/2022 at 2:51 AM, Ellye.9123 said:

That's why I hope the goal for the next bits of content is to scale down a bit and give us more local and personal threats.

We already dealt with pretty much all known world-ending, cataclysmic threats around.  Suddenly making one appear out of nowhere now, just for us to kill it in a couple weeks, would be lame.
So it's probably better to scale down and slow the pace a bit, let our character deal with smaller fish, perhaps spend some time going around the world and seeing the result of all we did, etc.

All the while they can start laying down hints and pieces of a new large threat on the horizon for later.

Local threats, without the larger global threats as a meta narrative, would be over way too quickly to be real stories.

Like, if you took the Bangar storyline, but removed all of Jormag's influence in that narrative

1. Bangar wouldn't have been manipulated by Jormag to do any of it in the first place.
2. Even if he did do it of his own volition, there would have been no storm blocking us from following him. Meaning we would have caught up to him moments after he left, and beaten him before he got anywhere.
3. Even if a storm of that magnitude/as fortunate as it was for Bangar did happen naturally, without Jormag's manipulations he would have never gotten to the point of killing Drakkar, meaning no massive PR boost for him that got so many Charr to defect to his side.
4. Event if he did THAT, without Jormag's influence there would have been no spirit energy enhanced Dominion, and no Frost Legion, meaning Bangar's forces would have been so massively outgunned/outnumbered the "war" would have been over the very next release anyways. We wouldn't even need the Drizzlewood two parter to show it.

Not to mention we have pretty much already cleaned out all the local/personal threats in the known world

1. The Centaur War is over. They got pushed back to their homelands, and their leader killed. Even Anet was ready to make us buddies in Icebrood Saga before it got cut, because even they think its over.
2. The whole White Mantle/Bandit issue is solved. The Mantle is totally wiped out, and the bandits(who were being funded by the White Mantle) no longer have that organization/funding. The remaining bandit leaders got wiped out during the "Justice of the Blades" side story.
3. We learned the truth about the Sylvari's origins, and their immunity to dragon corruption. And we killed Mordremoth meaning they never have to worry about being controlled again.
4. The Nightmare court was never particularly large in the first place, and has suffered so many losses that it doesn't make sense for them to come back as a significant threat any time soon.
5. We went underground(in Tangled Depths), found a lost Asuran city(Rata Novus), learned more about the Asura who stayed underground to keep fighting Primordus when the rest of their kind fled to the surface(Rata Novans), found some tech/magic/research they developed to fight Primordus(Dragon Lab), used that to find Primordus' weakness, and killed him(LWS3 and IBS), and stopped the Inquest from stealing the ancient Asuran secrets(Rata Arcanum).
6. We went back to the old Norn lands(Bjora/Drizzlewood), visited many of their old settlements(Jora's Keep, Longeye's, Sifhalla), got to visit the place Asgeir fought Frostfang and Jormag, and learned the truth of that encounter and the Norn's exodus south. We helped Jhavi defeat Drakkar, earning her family some measure of vengeance for what the beast did to them. We found out what happened to the "lost" Spirits of the Wild, visited the place the Spirits first showed themselves to the Norn, and the other Spirits played a big role in the story. Braham took his Asgeir 2.0/Norn of Prophecy story to is conclusion, being a key figure in the defeat of Jormag.
7. Jormag's death, as well as the death of the Franeir, pretty much ruined the whole Svanir cult into nothingness.
8. The Charr stories are over themselves. Kralkatorrik is dead, and the Branded in Ascalon wiped out. The Flame legion had been largely reabsorbed into the larger Charr society, and progress has been made at finding peace with the remaining holdouts. The whole Charr civil war dealt with the Bangar/Smodur issues, purging the toxic, and self destructive, elements from Charr society out, and helping them start on a new path. This has likely allowed them to begin reaching out to the Olmakhan, bringing all of Charr society back together.
9. In Elona, Palawa Joko is dead, and his empire collapsed. The Sunspears were rebuilt, and are leading a coalition of various Elonian factions into creating a new republic, which has now began reaching out to the rest of the world. What remained of the Forged have been wiped out as well.
10. In Cantha the Empire has ended its isolationist policies, and reopened its borders. The Aetherblade issue was resolved. The Speakers/Jade Brotherhood have reached a tentative peace, and the Brotherhood is looking to find places outside of Cantha where they can go legit. Soo-Won is dead, and the void threat has been stopped.
11. The personal stories for Logan, Rytlock, Eir, Caithe, Rox, Braham, Canach, Taimi, Gorrik, and Marjory/Kas, are pretty much over at this point.

Like, the only really pressing issues left are the Purists likely trying to unleash the Risen horde in Drowned Kaineng on New Kaineng to wipe the city out, and the monster of the deeps thats powerful, and influential, people mistook it for an Elder Dragon. Both of which are likely LWS6 issues, and not small local/personal threats. And there is still the issue of the unresolved God plot with Lyssa, which is probably Xpack 4, barring some mist Demon invasion thing... or something.

Edited April 23, 2022 by Sajuuk Khar.1509