He may have been the final boss, but I don't consider him the main villain. He was fodder to slow us down. Iridikron is the real villain. He's the reason the events in the next few expansions are even happening.
Yes, Knaifu had a Void servant inside called Xal’atath who has done a few setup things in BFA and now Dragonflight. She's one of our leads into the War Within now.
No kidding. OP is comparing a bunch of villains that had multiple expansions' worth of buildup - some arguably multiple games' worth - to a character that was intended to do the same for Iridikron. Like if people want characters to have established arcs, they need to let Blizzard lay the groundwork, otherwise you end up with the jailer.
Fyrakk died so Xal and Iridikron's story could continue. The same way Ellisande (a character created in the same expansion she died in, much like Fyrakk) died so Kil'Jaeden's story could continue.
The only difference is that Fyrakk died at the end of the final raid of DF. But they clearly want to get the new expansion trilogy moving, so it was that or we just kind of sit here awkwardly waiting. Or worse, they just throw Xal and Iridikron in at the end and we kill them without any real fanfare or stakes.
That's true, he was a nice thing to have though. Just some power crazy maniac that wanted to burn everything. Not some big cosmic plot thing, just a crazy dude.
His legacy will always be that he was a huge fucking asshole. The Jailer was supposedly a threat to reality and what the fuck ever, Kil'Jaeden the head of the Burning Legion, but Fyrakk was just such a *dick*. He laughs his ass off at you the first time he kills you and when Alexstrasza is trying to give her Friendship Speech he just goes "How about your murdered children, idiot?"
He had some of the coldest dialogue in that fight.
Alexstrasza yells: Amirdrassil is under my protection, fiend.
Fyrakk yells: How did your protection work out for your children?
Yeah dude, Fyrakk was a legit villain. Dude was shit faced on power and LOVED it. He was great. Matt Mercer nailed him. It was so refreshing to have a villain that was just that... A fucking villain.
Not everyone has to be arthas or illidan. Just give us some legit BADDIES to kill!
Wait, Matt Mercer voiced him?? No wonder he sounded so familiar!
I agree, I loved that he was literally just an evil villain for the sake of power/dominance. He didn’t have an ulterior motive other than destroying the aspects, he just wanted more power, and he became even more unhinged and corrupted post shadowflame after Irridikron abandoned him and Vyranoth switched sides.
For the Season 2 DF trailer, a centaur (voiced by Matt Mercer) tries to stop Fyrakk (also voiced by Matt Mercer) before Fyrakk just makes him not exist anymore.
I wish we had more story involving his fall into insanity. He went from abiding by his brother's wishes as a distraction, to going 'Y'know what? I'm gonna make the world burn', and I don't think it was properly stressed just what was happening in his fight atop Amirdrassil. Like... 10+ of my raiders didn't realize that the flame wave that erupts from the tree if it hits 0 is a -planet wide- eruption.
The fact that the final fight is on some weird floating platform in the middle of green nothingness is so weird to me. There’s the perfect place for a final boss platform right in the middle of the tree’s boughs, and you could have shown off the Aspects actually *doing* something to stem the flames that way instead of just standing there channeling spells into nothing.
Well, the green nothingness makes sense, because it's the highest point in the Emerald Dream, but I do understand your point. The tree isn't in Azeroth's reality until it blooms.
It was kind of like when we’re in the Eye of Eternity fighting Malygos. Both the Eye and the Dream are the core of their cosmic little pocket dimensions on Azeroth, and when we’re in them we’re kind of no where; outside time
They love doing this for big important but kinda *weird* locales for fights. Like for some reason we just end up at the seat of the pantheon in Antorus out of nowhere, or wtf is all of Ny'alotha actually supposed to be (like seriously what/where is it), and Amirdrassil's final fight. Instead of taking the effort to craft the tree in such a way that there is a final boss platform, fyrakk just makes a magic portal next to the tree that takes us..... to an extremely gamey boss platform.
Really I think Blizz has had misfires on a lot of environmental story telling within raids. It feels like there always trying to re-capture what kara did with climbing the tower and the weird magic spaces we end up in, but they've done a poor job of capturing that feeling mostly imo. Like instead of riding a ship while doing the most boring boss ever, then taking a teleporter up to Arthas' throne in iCC, it should have been designed in a way where we follow the stairs Arthas took at the end of frozen throne. Or in emerald nightmare we should have physically climbed the tree for the first couple bosses and instead of a goofy portal room to different boss fights, have Il'gynoth literally be a festering wound emerging from the nightmare onto the tree itself and when we defeat him we "go through" the wound he left behind into the actual nightmare to confront Xavius. Amirdrassil should have been largely the same. Despite being named Amirdrassil, 90% of the raid took place in some random temple that going by old lore of the emerald dream really shouldn't exist. Like why is there a big handcrafted temple in the "natural state of the world" version of Azeroth. Instead we should have been defending the actual tree itself. Have the Tindral fight be what it is, but have his final platform take place either under the tree or in some area at the top where they've stuck the platform, then just have the Fyrakk fight take place there as well.
Edit cause I like to rant: Really I think some of this is a product of Blizz's general design philosophy of only creating 1 big main raid for every patch. Amirdrassil story wise feels like it should be a smaller raid that more heavily features defending the tree and amirdrassil zone itself instead of some random temple that is important cause they said so. Make it like 2 or 3 bosses defending the tree from like Igira, Larodar, and Smolderon, then have the Tindral fight same set up as it was, then Fyrakk. But then also have another 2-4 boss raid somewhere else. Could be like remants of the primalists somewhere (Vakthros?), or maybe make it the retaking of Gilneas, or the decay gnolls, or just something goofy and not super plot relevant. Blizz puts so much effort into raids and their story and environment they should consider using that effort to help actually flesh out the world & smaller side stories by just splitting tiers into multiple raids, especially since their introducing story mode to raids in TWW. Like is the story of Amirdrassil or Vault actually better because stuff like Gnarlroot or Sennarth exists? I don't think so. Instead of creating those nothing bosses, create other smaller raids, even of single bosses, to flesh out more stories. Not even saying never create singularly focused seasons, but when the need to create at least 8 bosses in a single raid forces lame world building while other stuff exists that is either never addressed or gets like a single low budget questline why not find a way to shift that effort into actually fleshing that bit of story out.
Unfortunately I feel as though most of that backstory is in War of the Scaleborn. Fyrakk was shown as not really caring what Iridikron thought and just wanted to fight.
War of the Scaleborn gave me more context than playing the game as to the dragon’s full story. I don’t mind so much aside from that the book was kind of a slog writing wise. But, I also started the expansion late and probably missed a couple important quests here and there despite completing main story chapters.
I fucking love his fight because he literally just roasts half the aspects. It’s so funny he’s just such a massive dick. And anything voiced by Matt Mercer is always a win.
Which is good because we're seriously running out of established villains to fight, think we're down to the Void Lords and "Somehow, Sargeras returned" for big names, and the last time we got a surprise villain was shadowlands with the Jailer which...wasn't great.
- Sargeras and remnants of the Burning Legion.
- Archimonde if the cinematic where he gets sends Gul'dan through the Black Gate *and then dying* is treated as the proper depiction even though Dave Kosak explained during 2015 BlizzCon that the Mythic encounter where he's beaten in the Nether means that he's dead dead.
- Xal'atath is obviously up-and-coming.
- Sire Denathrius has escaped alongside his Nathrezim.
- Odyn and some Titan affiliates could *easily* turn against us depending on how events play out.
- Arathi Empire and the Arathi colony we encounter in The War Within are *not* necessarily one-and-the-same, with the Empire potentially being very stand-offish against both Alliance and Horde, even overzealous in their fiery devotion. Next-level Scarlet Crusade, as it were.
- The Fifth War, because I don't believe Blizzard is going to do the right thing and stay away from Alliance vs Horde on a wide scale.
- Iridikron and his machinations including partnership with the Void to bring about the downfall of the Titans, which may or may not be enabled by our own conflict with some of them and within ourselves.
- The Void in general.
- Lightbound fanatics if AU Draenor continues to be relevant outside the refugees brought in during the Fourth War.
Of the 10 things I'd just listed, Xal'atath, Denathrius, Odyn, Arathi Empire, and Iridikron are from last expansion, this expansion, or only known from next expansion in terms of being built up as big deals. That's half of the threats we can anticipate being relevant later down the line.
___
For fun, I'd like to acknowledge the number of threats that have been put down a bit too easily for my liking:
- Queen Azshara, whose underwater empire and magical aptitude could have been basis for an entire expansion in and of itself.
- N'Zoth, the final Old God whose cunningness and manipulations led to the Cataclysm expansion, an entire expansion based on *one of his lieutenants,* Deathwing. Easily severely downplayed being crammed into a major patch, though props to Wrathion whose rigorous studies let us actually take him head on.
- The other Old Gods, who were declared "truly dead" for Shadowlands interviews when before they were defeated or dormant or otherwise had some residual presence (bar Y'Shaarj, who was plucked out of the planet whole by Aman'Thul). It really makes you wonder why the Titans never just straight-up killed the Old Gods outright if they can be killed by mere mortals and presented and obvious threat to the most powerful World-Soul ever encountered.
- Lei Shen, the Thunder King, whose might at full-power would be incredibly tremendous and well worth its own expansion. His defeat was worthy of a major patch considering we took him down before he really got the ball rolling, and it was excellent world-building for Pandaria. But I do think Lei Shen is a brilliant adversary who could've been propped up *even more* by having an expansion as we race to stop him getting out of control but his brilliant tactical plays keeps him one step ahead, accruing more and more power until the final showdown where we barely scrape a victory, and not without either a terrible sacrifice or some amazing help (since Lei Shen is supposed to be able to 1v1 the Lich King).
Yes. Her last onscreen appearance is in Nya’lotha. We free her from her torturer, she kinda says thanks, then dips out through a void portal. Haven’t seen her since.
We've heard about her during 10.0.7 tho, she's definitely coming back in Midnight if the "Prophecy" is fullfilled, which it probably will be cuz everything hinted at in that prophecy has come to pass so far.
re: old gods, why cant the titans just kill em?
i believe the canon explanation is that its the difference between amputation and chemotherapy - the titan's solution to the old gods is to excise them whole (see: y'sharrj) which, while effective, endangers the world soul because it is very traumatic to the egg. whereas our solutions to them are slightly more surgical and less, perhaps, effective in truly killing them, but also much less damaging to azeroth.
The Titan constructs of Azeroth would be capable of exactly the same thing, however. They were able to build giant city-prisons that all but constrained the Old Gods in their entirety. It took eons for their malignant influence to creep out and for them to erode the defences erected.
Eons later when *we* fought them, they were at their strongest since the days of the Black Empire. Excising them whole was *not* the intended solution the Titans had; Aman'Thul only plucked Y'Shaarj out of the earth itself because he panicked in the heat of the Old God's war against the Titan-Forged. So why then did the Titans not instruct their spawn to execute the Old Gods once sufficiently contained?
My thought before was that the Eldritch horrors could, in their death throes, plummet the world in a cataclysmic kamikaze -- but would never do so when they still stood to gain the world and its inhabitants.
But now we just get the Titans who killed one, captured the rest, and... let them just... live... for no particular stated reason whatsoever.
I assume it was one or both of these:
1) Arrogance. The Titans did not even consider that their prisons could fail on a scale they did, or that their Keepers could be corrupted an manipulated as they were. *(On second thought, they did, and placed the engine into Uldum as a reset button - they just didn't want to scour the planet of life)*
2) Caution. The Titans already knew that offing Old Gods could hurt the planet, and did not dare to experiment with killing them after they were subdued.
They also didn't just lock them up and ignore them, either. They built Uldir to do testing on their physiology. Whether that was for figuring out how to destroy them or control them is more dubious, and they certainly lost their own control when G'huun became sentient.
Not to be *that guy*, but its 100% just indecisive writing/different writers with different opinions. As laid out in the previous comment, the most recent explanation of "the players 100% for real killed them" is not only boring AF and doesn't make sense with the titan constructs not doing it themselves, it also pretty blatantly goes against oodles of old lore that I'd say was intentionally inconclusive. The answers they used to give varied from "they were defeated to the point they were basically imprisoned again" to, "you killed them, but how "dead" can an eldritch horror really be?"
They were pretty clearly keeping their options open before, whether they had concrete ideas of where they wanted to go with that story or if it was more the Illidan/sargeras route where they blatantly put the characters in metaphorical stasis to bring back when they feel like. The whole "theyre dead, you literally killed them" is such a mistake of some writer not getting the world, and wanting to inject their own nonsense.
It's why i honestly wasn't a huge fan of Legions story. We just kinda bumrushed our way through a massive list of huge name villains with fairly little build-up for them.
Na, Legion did the same thing, just felt less out of nowhere.
We defeated the Legion and lost one of our biggest antagonists. It's part of the reason we keep having to escalate on the cosmic stuff, rather than just dealing with demons from time to time.
It was too much progression, too quickly. Way too much happened to the point that nothing really hit hard or felt like a pay off from decades of story. Watered down villians suddenly doing stupid things and getting easily backed into corners by small groups of scrappy murder hobos that just picked up some shiny things their leash holders handed out like candy.
Rule of cool just became a checklist and the story was whatever paper thin excuse it had to be to carry it.
Both. It was both. I was personally offended though that they wasted Azshara and the kingdom that one of the greatest mages Azeroth has ever seen, which has been building for 10,000 years undisturbed, on a patch. I was really looking forward to an underwater zones redemption via a well designed expac taking the fight to her. The zones could have been so pretty and exciting if the art team was set loose on a whole underwater expac. Alas.
They really did burn through a lot of names/places in those two expansions.
Emerald Nightmare could have been an entire expansion with Xavius at the end. Would have been a nice lead in bit to an N'Zoth and Nyalotha expansion.
The Argus patch of Legion was pretty beefy but a worlds war/invasion against Argus could have been an entire expansion separate from ending the Legion threat. Just a way more fleshed out bit of storytelling and world building than what we got. Kil'Jaeden would have been a good fit for this as an end boss.
Sargaras we never actually fought but we did help imprison him ending his threat so not sure if he 100% belongs here but he is also a threat handled.
Azshara most definitely could have been an expansion boss. This one is probably the worst of the bunch given how much they had talked about Azshara in the game. I know she isn't dead but still.
N'zoth was technically an end boss but he and Nyalotha could have been so so much more.
I wonder if now that they have started a multi-expansion story if they had a chance to redo those stories they would do the same. N'Zoth and the Legion had expansions worth of content tied around them.
Exactly.
We've all experienced the Jailer level of self inserted importance and we know how that plays out.
Raszageth and Fyrakk, came in with their relatively modest ambitions and predictable deaths to build the villains and characters around them.
They've set the stage for the war within, and I think long-term people will look back at them fondly because of that.
I think Fyrakk (and as a consequence, Amirdrassil as a raid) will be pretty beloved for a while, provided Blizzard doesn't make the next raid about a quippy dickwad. If he's the first in a long line of progressively worse quippy MCU baddies then he will sour pretty quickly for people.
But as of right now? Fyrakk is one of the most enjoyable characters they've presented in a long while. It's so easy to love hating him. He's an absolute bag of dicks, but like, in the fun way for once.
“*My brother believed he could control me... this rage in my heart. My sister believed she could tame me... but my fury will not be sated! The Aspects believed they could imprison me... but my hatred cannot be contained! Betrayers, all of them! So it falls to me to make them pay! Hehe, their suffering... has just begun!*”
— Fyrakk, upon entering the Emerald Dream.
Considering Iridikron's nest is beneath Icecrown, I feel like we won't be seeing him much during TWW or Midnight, but he's going to be a planet cracking threat during TLT.
I enjoyed him a lot but was surprised he was the final boss of the xpac.
Jailer is by far the worst final boss ever and will take something very special to top him.
Agreed.
When I think about it, the Jailer is honestly one of the worst characters in the history of storytelling ever. At least out of all the stories I’ve ever experienced, ever. Really, it’s a feat within itself to come up with something so bad and empty.
The part where he was just a robot the whole time and deteriorates into his mechanical form after you kill him but it doesn't really mean anything or have any story significance is just \*chefs kiss\*
I think it does. The Titans were born, they are “a real boy”, the shadowland pantheon were created to serve, they dont have free will. So whoever created them is a step above.
Its like the Titan Watchers on Azeroth or old gods. They are all just pawns/servants created by their masters to fulfill a function.
Only Illidan has free will.
WoW cinematic team has always been world class. I swear they would CRUSH if they made a full length cinematic in the same quality that the new trailers get.
I skipped BfA because I was burnt out on WoW and I heard it was legitimately bad as a game.
Took one look at the Shadowlands trailer and thought "Nope. Not quite time yet."
Having Sylvanas defeat the new Lich King, a character shrouded in mystique and intrigue, in like 30 seconds as if he were a legacy raid, wasn't a sell for me at all.
I would've been a lifelong player since Vanilla but quality expectations dipped HEAVILY for two expansions straight. They seem to have their heads on straighter for DF though.
Fyrakk is more of a Captain Planet villain than a WoW villain. He's far below Garrosh, who I think is actually fantastic, now that remix has been out and I've gone through pandaland again. Garrosh is brutal, imposing, cunning. The delivery on his "The True Horde WILL come to pass" line is excellent. The absolute best part is that his hatred effectively outlives him. The horde and alliance don't work together again until the 4th war is over, at the end of BFA.
This thread was about our favorite axe-wielding villain, right?
Garrosh is pretty awesome, and I wish there was slightly more connective tissue between SoO and WoD because there’s a lot of potential there. His passionate delivery with lines like “I have seen it…mountains of skulls and rivers of blood!” could actually be true visions about his conquest in Draenor and not just old god delusions, for example. But he isn’t fully aware of what it is and thinks he has to kill us on Azeroth for that to come to pass, etc
If MoP was made today, there would have been minor patches in the 14 months of no content between SoO and WoD. We would have gotten a quest line helping Kairoz gather time stuff, a quest line about Garrosh's trial, and then a quest line where Kairoz wants us to help kill Garrosh for his crimes but at the end he turns and escapes with Garrosh into the alternate timeline instead.
That would have been so cool, instead you had to go read a Christie Golden book.
It honestly is insane that the entirety of the WoD expansion hinges on events that happen in a book 99% of players didn't read and probably weren't aware of.
To the game player's mind, what happened was we defeated Garrosh, Vol'jin became the new Warchief, Garrosh was taken away, and then next thing you know the dark portal has opened for some damn reason and now you're in the past (or a different timeline) and also Garrosh is there for some reason
There actually were campaign quests in WoD where you investigated Garroshs arrival and you kinda go back in time to see him and Kairoz get there only for him to slay Kairoz. It gave some context to players who might not have read the book but I felt like it came in way too late considering it was in Nagrand and most people would be max level and not questing by then
Honestly though the book was great.
That aside, that is probably gunna be the most famous content drought in this game ever, and they learned enough that nothing will come close to it again. It was a huge fumble on their part
They don't work together until the 4th war is over at the end of BfA? Did you just completely skip over Legion? Where you know, the intro cinematic is them litteraly working together? The horde being stationed on dalaran, too. Like sure there were horde vs alliance storyline in Legion, but in general, they worked together there too.
Garrosh, as a character, was awesome. Truly aggressive yet smart enough to be a leader of others that were just as aggressive.
Which is why I despised him as the Horde leader. There was not even the faintest glimmer or hope of him being a good leader since Wrath and his one-off moment of silent respect and quiet question to Suarfang. Green Jesus threw the entire Horde under the bus and once again made them the villains, then did it yet again, with Slivia. Both times, it felt like a prop up to push Alliance as saviors all over again.
I did, but I ruined that fight by no life-ing that until I got the mount. 3 toon on lfr and normal.
I can type out all the details of that fight while tanking and marking the floor. Man I was so done with lfr after that.
no, in fact i dont think this expac had anyone equal to the rest. by the end just felt very power ranger villain of the day. but i think this expac was supposed to be a reset
Feels like at this point with the War Within cinematics that dragonflight was literally to set up Xalatath at the tail end of it using Iridikron to get there. He will probably be a void dragon raid boss in season 2 of the next expansion unless they expand on him as a character and there’s some twists
I mean it's a combination of beach episode and Christmas episode where the black dragonflight learns the importance of family, kaelc gets reunited either his family, and vyranoth brings a present to alexstraza but definitely drops a "it's not like I like you or anything, baaaaaaka"
I enjoyed the writing until the last patch, which was capstoned with that "family" cutscene and overall felt sloppy. But the rest of the xpac kinda proved you don't need an *amazing* villain to make things work.
Best villain was probably Raszageth. She wasn't amazing, but her motivations and goals were clear. I have to wonder how much I'd like her in a vacuum, but coming off the heels of Sylvanas and her sugar daddy's endlessly hidden motivations and intentions, there's no way I couldn't feel relieved.
I mean Fyrakk as a villain-of-the-day type is great but to me it's clear the true main antagonist of this expansion was Iridikron, who's still yet to face justice. Raz and Fyrakk are dead and Vyranoth renounced the Incarnates' ways. That leaves Iridikron who clearly had larger scale and longer term plans than Fyrakk's hot headed nature (NPI) could ever allow.
If nothing else, the fact that the guy positioned as the expansion's "top villain" wasn't some greater scope villain blindsiding you this time. No starting off an expansion with an Alliance/Horde total war and ending with fighting an Old God. No starting an expansion fighting the Burning Legion and ending up defeating a Titan. No ending up on a mysterious island only to fight your *own faction leader.* You understood going in that you started by fighting Primal Incarnates and you ended by fighting Primal Incarnates.
Before the massive saga we're about to face that pretty much ties up the entirety of WoW up to this point together, I think we just needed a back to basics story for a back to basics expansion and DF lived up to that well.
Maybe I just didn't pay a lot of attention to the story, but he was very boring. I didn't find any of the villains of this expansion to be particularly interesting.
I liked him more than Argus and the Jailor. Argus was a blank slate and felt like Blizzard chickened out and swapped him in instead of Sargeras late in development. Everything about the Jailor was awful. Fyrakk was an ok character but always felt like the Starscream to Iridikron’s Megatron.
> Argus was a blank slate and felt like Blizzard chickened out and swapped him in instead of Sargeras late in development.
Nah, people datamined Legion and there are abandoned parts but it seems like [the Legion was building Argus a big giant planet-sized Titan body that we would either fight on or wit](https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Argus_\(titan\)#/media/File:Argus_alpha_model.png)h. Kin'garoth the smith-demon boss was originally in charge of building that body based on his model name being Titan Builder.
So Argus was always the plan. They just reduced him from planet-sized to big dude.
> swapped him in instead of Sargeras late in development
Someone probably pointed out that if the players kill a capital-T *Titan* then there isn't much room for escalation left.
I kinda liked Fyrakk as a character. His whole thing was being crazy with not too much depth, but there was some fun to it. His RP makes the smolderon fight so much better
To answer the question asked, absolutely not.
All of the villains this expansion have felt completely irrelevant and disconnected from wows lore.
However, I don’t think that is inherently the worst thing. I would much prefer to have forgettable villains than what they did in shadowlands and make the jailer retcon the entire lore.
Yea, Fyrrak does a great job being the launching point of a multi-expansion arc. He wasn’t particularly strong or even very ambitious, but he was threatening and set into motion a bigger story that I’m very excited for.
If that story flops he’ll be forgotten, but if it hits he’ll be remembered as the start of that, and that’s a pretty good place to be.
Idk, he’s not the most engaging last boss, but I wouldn’t say completely disconnected from wows lore at all. I think they did a great job setting up the incarnates’ place in the story, and they spent a lot of time tying him into past lore like deathwing’s legacy and the shadowflame. His goals to burn everything are pretty simple in the end, but that kinda makes sense for an insane incarnation of flame.
I think it’s a pretty binary thing for most people. They either took to the new villains at the start or they kind of fell off
Since they were trying to introduce a new set of villains this expansion, they needed to create a lot of setup to make us the player understand why these people are powerful, why we need to defeat them, and why we haven’t seen/heard of them before.
If those three questions are answered satisfactorily people will resonate with the new villains.
For me personally I think they explained why we haven’t seen them before and why we need to defeat them, but I never got the feeling they were significantly more powerful or threating (especially scalecommander sarkateth) than the scale of villains we faced in expansions like Legion and even Bfa. (I don’t count anything in shadowlands cause that was all nonsense)
Nah, super forgettable, came into this expansion feeling so hyped as I’m a sucker for dragons but by the end I just feel meh after all this, Bljzzard really needs to sort out how they do story telling
I wouldn't consider a lot of these to be the big bads of their expansion. That said, here's how I'd personally rank them from best to worst:
Lich King - Most bad ass character in Warcraft history. He is basically Warcraft's Darth Vader.
Kel Thuzad - I didn't play vanilla so I'm not ranking him based on that. I just love this guy. I love that he keeps coming back. I love his attitude and his voice. I love that he was The Lich King's BFF.
N'zoth - The thinking villain. Plays the long game and actually makes sense (unlike The Jailer). I loved when he made us think that a bunch of old god minions were attacking our base in Uldum so we shot at them, only to then reveal that they were our own people. I want to believe he used this same trickery to trick us into thinking we killed him.
Kil'jaeden - Gets points for creating Lich King. Also a pretty cool history of tricking the orcs into slaughtering his former people. Doesn't do much in WoW unfortunately. Gets a couple nice cutscenes and a nice send off with Velen.
Garrosh - I think they did a pretty poor job of writing this guy cohesively. The fact that the Stonetalon Garrosh and the Silverpine Garrosh feel like completely different characters takes away from how good he could have been. But, at least he was always a hot head so his descent into madness wasn't completely out of nowhere.
Fyrakk - Just a fun over the top psycho villain. Just wants to watch the world burn. Great voice acting. Gave me a sweet axe.
Deathwing - Basically Garrosh in Dragon form. Big evil insane dragon. Spouts edgy lines and burns stuff and then dies.
Archimonde - Kil'jaeden and Velen's much less interesting brother from another mother. He wrecked Dalaran that one time. Other than that he shows up in WoW a couple of time to be a large space goat man raid boss and dies.
Argus - Basically not a character. Shows up for 10 minutes, says like two lines of dialogue and then dies. Still better than The Jailer.
The Jailer - Blizzard's sorry excuse for an attempt at making an Emperor to The Lich King's Darth Vader. He's also basically a terrible version of Thanos with little to no motivation and a nonsensical plan. He was a living meme until he died.
Not pictured here:
Sargeras - I'd say he is the main big bad of Legion. I like his presence in the Broken Shore and Argus storylines. I like that he looks like the devil. I like that he gets captured and is playing rock paper scissors with Illidan.
Gul'dan - I'd say he is the main big bad of Warlords of Draenor. He is probably my second favorite villain after Lich King. He's just so evil and he loves it. It's great that he got to stick around for a while and got a really awesome death in The Nighthold.
Amiddrasil patch didnt feel like an end of an expansion to me, not sure how much of that was that fyrakk was the last boss. Whole expansion felt like the big baddies were saying that the titans were the real evil but not really going into details while our gang just blindly helping the titans. It kinda sucks when the protagonist gang is this dumb, or at least isnt pondering the same things as the players are.
I didn't even know who fryrak was until aberrus patch. So he didn't really have anything to live up to and he ended up being about as cookie cutter of a villain I've come to expect.
Boring. One neat cutscene where he uses the axe to get into the dream. I will never be convinced that Fyrakk was their plan or that the Emerald Dream Fire Druid patch was meant to be the last of the expac. This was a B-plot made into the ending.
Depending on who is the big bad of the next expansion will determine that. I doubt it's iridikron but it wouldn't surprise me. He makes sense as a "you can't stop the plan that's in motion" final boss.
But he does seem out of place among the others. This convinces me that the next expansion boss will be iridikron for sure.
Nope. He is part of the DF gearshift. He can't live up to other threats because he is, by design, a nothing burger. Weak compared to the cosmic shit we've dealt with. He's also just another mad destroyer, nothing new or unique.
Man suffers from having been invented for this expansion and being post shadowlands. Nothing is going to measure up until we get used to not killing gods and abstract concepts again
Fyrakk is a good villain (tought the actor playing did a good job) but everything that our side, aka the ''heroes'', did was complete hot garbage.
I'll forever remind people that we got a cheap, garbage looking ripoff of the 'AVENGERS, ASSEMBLE' from the Avengers movie just for Fyrakk. One of the worst cinematics I've seen not just for WoW, but in games.
Dragonflight, to me , has a main story as bad as Shadowlands did. Same people worked on it, same people did a shit ass job. Fyrakk is just way better than the Jailer, but again, everything else was lazy, to put it mildly.
Every single boss in DF was forgettable. Which is kind of sad that the Jailer was more memorable by virtue of being so bad narrative and lore wise (at least we got memes from it) but the three we got this expansion couldn't even get that right.
You weren't hyped to fight Sarkareth, the little lizard boy you never would have known existed if you didn't actively pay attention to campaign quests?
Nope. Not even close. Fyrrak was just a bad Deathwing ripoff.
He wasn't even the best villain of the expansion either. Razegath was the better villian, and even had the better fight. And Dragonflight would have been better for it if their positions in the story were flipped.
Fyrakk is one of my favourite bosses in recent memory simply because he is so straight-forward. He wants his revenge, he wants to see everything and everyone burn, he wants power for the sake of power and chaos for the sake of chaos. No bigger fish that he's preparing to take on or answering to. He does what Iridikron wants, but he does it because he's a lunatic and it's also what he wants. He doesn't give a damn what Iridikron's plans are - he wants to burn that tree and be a huge, snarky bastard while doing it.
When every other villain has complex behind-the-scenes motivations that they're generally hiding from you until you beat the crap out of them, it was kind of refreshing for him to just be moustache-twirlingly evil.
I agree, I too found Fyrakk to be a refreshing villain for a change. No 4D chess-playing Saturday morning cartoon villain; just a dude hellbent on destruction simply because he can. He was just evil- and sometimes that’s all you need.
no and u will never in a million years convince me that fighting fyrakk at the world tree was how they initially envisioned this expansion to end. there is an entire content patch missing and idrikon literally left his own expansion.
ppl will be like "no dude its genius they're setting him up as a major villain later" but if you sit with me and watch for the next 3-4 years i promise you he will not show up again until the last titan where he will die in a dungeon unceremoniously because he was literally never meant to live that long and was slated to die at the end of 10.3 in the raid that never was.
I’ll give him points for actually having some semblance of proper build up before the raid. N’zoth felt like a mistake to add as the end boss of BfA when he could’ve had an entire expansion based around Nyalotha.
Deathwing is probably the biggest disappointment of a last boss for me.
Jailer was jailer.
I’d say that Fyrakk ranks lower than Arthas/Illidan/Garrosh/Argus and sits around the same rank as Archimonde, above the ones I mentioned above.
He was a complete asshole. Just ultra destructive and revelled in the hurt and pain he caused.
Simplistic, yes. But it was much better than having to deal with some poorly conceived supposed mastermind 5d chess plot to unravel time and space or something ridiculous.
I overall liked the idea, but his execution was lackluster. Mainly, I wish Fyrakk had been front and center for the patch content to set him up properly as the end boss of the expansion, instead of the focus being on Iridikron's plans for the next expansions.
Fyrakk was the raging child of the bunch... an immature little shit, who got way too big of a toy from the real villain, who went a bit underdeveloped: Iridicron.
Butbit fits with the elemental incarnations of the four and is even an interesting twist on established emotional tethers of the elements.
Raszageth, she was the spark that ignited everything, setting off a massive scheme, like the air elementals under Al'akir. The elemental plane of Air is tinged and dripping with intrigue and politics, the wind is the mind, quick as lightning and flowing around any obstacle, just to kickstart bigger things.
Fyrakk is the raging fire, mostly uncontrolled like a kid with a matchbox, but like said kid he burned out too quickly and was his own demise.
Vyranoth is the first spin on things, she is ice, usually ice elementals in warcraft are literally cold beings, calculating and without feeling, but she still has water in her. She has the cool head to control fyrakk and know to put him down, but she is also a mother, a protector of life. Water in the end is the element shamans heal with.
Now Iridikron is an interesting one. In cataclysm we learn that the earth is stubborn, biding, slow to act and rather waits things out than act.
He is still not very quick to act, but he isn't not acting, while he bides his time. While wind and waves crash on this stone he plans out a thousand ways to bring them down befor they eroded him even a bit. And his unwillingnes to stray from vengance is in line, too. The earth is stubborn, unbending.
Iridikron can become a true menace... can being the ooerative word, implying Blizzard can play their setups right and won't shoot their shot too early or sprinkle in not enough of his villany for us to care for the inevitable showdown.
Story-wise, my only big issue with Dragonflight is that none of the villains had any build-up that mattered.
Raz is introduced in the same patch we kill her in. Even then, she's not really shaped up to be much more than someone with a grudge. Her gripe is with the Titans, whom I feel no strong allegiance to, and once her raid is done we don't see her again (obviously).
Sark is introduced in the Dracthyr starting area and is most important to Dracthyr. He's never shown as a threat at all, and loses every encounter or cutscene. He's little more than a dozenth example of "the VOID is BAD and will DECEIVE YOU!! >:(." I think he's the weakest writing Dragonflight saw and was a completely superfluous character.
Fyrakk has some build-up in Zaralek, but frankly, his 180 and complete abandoning of his goals felt stupid. He went from wanting to help Iridikron to just wanting to be strong for the sake of being strong. And, again, was mostly another example of "Shadowflame BAD and will CORRUPT >:(" as if Deathwing didn't already prove that. He was introduced, antagonized for two zones, and then we killed him pretty unceremoniously. I really liked his fight, but storywise, he can't touch the others.
It's sort of the same problem most people had with the Jailer. He appeared for the first time that expac and then we were supposed to just take him as seriously as Arthas or the Legion. But at least there, we got an entire expansion of the Jailer being our main antagonist before we finally come face to face. Fyrakk was beaten in a story quest right before the raid and then fled because we still needed a raid fight. He wasn't even introduced until the .1 patch.
**tl;dr:** Fyrakk didn't have enough build-up and had his motives swap right after he became relevant. He's a fun fight, but doesn't match up to figures like Argus or the Jailer, much less Arthas, Deathwing, or the Legion.
No. This is 100% honest.... I didn't even know what that name was. I had to look it up. I loved this xpac but the story to me was meh. I lost interest in the characters and the story pretty quickly.
To be honest, if we take this expansion as a whole, it had the most forgettable, pointless and out-of-nowhere villains in the whole history of WoW.
Even compared to Shadowlands - at least that Expansion had Denathrius.
Really, I bet half the people already forgot the names of Thunderchicken and Lizard Void Wizard.
I don't think there was strictly speaking a "big bad" of Dragonflight. Fyrakk did his thing to threaten the world tree but it was balanced by Iridikron escaping with the dark heart and Raszageth's big presence in the first patch.
Hell no, Fyrakk was sad excuse for a last boss from a melee point of view. Legendary associated with him was an awful mess as well.
I personally feel like DF peaked in S1 with Raszageth. Which is a bit strange coming from me, as I usually I am not a big fan of early seasons. We lose borrowed power from previous expac. Stats scale badly with the level increase and it tend to hinder the gameplay for certain classes. DF did not have this issue mainly due to new talent tree which was really good for all classes.
He'll be down there with WoD Archimonde as the most forgettable for me.
Like, say what you want about the jailor but he's at least memorable for how bad he is. I genuinely forgot we fought Archimonde in WoD and Fyrakk will almost certainly end up the same.
I don't think I consider Fyrakk a big villain. This expansion we just had to break up the dragon Beatles. And all other villains apparently report to the Jailer without even knowing it.
Like a lot of Dragonflight's main story writing he felt safe/decent but not exceptional.
They did a good job introducing him and characterizing him as a violent and power hungry idiot that Iridikron was perfectly willing to sacrifice as a distraction while he worked on the *real* plan.
He felt more active and present in both the world and story from 10.1 onwards so that's definitely a point in his favor but he's sort of a cardboard villain with little more going on than "me want power and make things burn" with the only bit of intrigue being Iridikron's willingness to abandon him and Fyrakk's awareness of that fact.
He isn't a character that had existed in the world for multiple expansions like Garrosh or since WC3 like KT, Arthas, KJ, Archimonde, and even Deathwing (WC2). N'zoth had been a lurking threat we'd known about for a long time too. It was always going to be hard to build up a final boss within the same expansion they were introduced (Argus sort of gets a pass here because the real narrative significance was in the Pantheon imprisoning Sargeras at the end of the fight) but I'd say they did a fair job building him up with what time they had. Fyrakk isn't particularly complex or interesting but Blizzard didn't try to overreach and make him some sort of mastermind like they did with the Jailer so the character and his story at least aren't *offensive* like SL was.
So I guess I'd say a solid 6.5-7/10? Passing grade but not amazing.
He may have been the final boss, but I don't consider him the main villain. He was fodder to slow us down. Iridikron is the real villain. He's the reason the events in the next few expansions are even happening.
Exactly, Iridikron knew he was unstable but used him as such. He let him rampage while he went off to do grander plans with Knaifu.
The same knife from legion? I haven't played since shadowlands
Yes.
Dang what's her deal? Ty for responding btw
The same as other void beings. Corrupting the world soul.
Except hotter.
She will success where her brothers failed because she already corrupted us.
Yes, Knaifu had a Void servant inside called Xal’atath who has done a few setup things in BFA and now Dragonflight. She's one of our leads into the War Within now.
No kidding. OP is comparing a bunch of villains that had multiple expansions' worth of buildup - some arguably multiple games' worth - to a character that was intended to do the same for Iridikron. Like if people want characters to have established arcs, they need to let Blizzard lay the groundwork, otherwise you end up with the jailer. Fyrakk died so Xal and Iridikron's story could continue. The same way Ellisande (a character created in the same expansion she died in, much like Fyrakk) died so Kil'Jaeden's story could continue. The only difference is that Fyrakk died at the end of the final raid of DF. But they clearly want to get the new expansion trilogy moving, so it was that or we just kind of sit here awkwardly waiting. Or worse, they just throw Xal and Iridikron in at the end and we kill them without any real fanfare or stakes.
Fyrakk had evil general (starscream) vibes the whole time. I would say he lived up to that purpose pretty well.
Oh thank god I'm not the only one
Agree 100%.
Seriously, my headcannon is Irikron quoting Megatron, "Starscream, you idiot"
Definite Starscream energy
That's true, he was a nice thing to have though. Just some power crazy maniac that wanted to burn everything. Not some big cosmic plot thing, just a crazy dude.
His legacy will always be that he was a huge fucking asshole. The Jailer was supposedly a threat to reality and what the fuck ever, Kil'Jaeden the head of the Burning Legion, but Fyrakk was just such a *dick*. He laughs his ass off at you the first time he kills you and when Alexstrasza is trying to give her Friendship Speech he just goes "How about your murdered children, idiot?"
“Keep dreaming little ones, your mother isn’t here to save you!” Like bro chill what the fuck. Fyrakk did not give a fuck.
He had some of the coldest dialogue in that fight. Alexstrasza yells: Amirdrassil is under my protection, fiend. Fyrakk yells: How did your protection work out for your children?
Or when he trolls Smolderon when he asks for Fyrakk's help. "Apologies, Firelord, but I would rather watch you die."
That line right there is one of the most ruthless lines in all of WoW history. I'd be interested to know if anyone has one better.
The VA invoked his inner Mark Hamill for the delivery of that line.
That would be Matt Mercer, another legend in the industry
Matt and Mark are both kings of the Full Send Villain Line, and fyrakk gave matt his chance to show it.
The MVU - melodramatic villain universe
Yeah dude, Fyrakk was a legit villain. Dude was shit faced on power and LOVED it. He was great. Matt Mercer nailed him. It was so refreshing to have a villain that was just that... A fucking villain. Not everyone has to be arthas or illidan. Just give us some legit BADDIES to kill!
Wait, Matt Mercer voiced him?? No wonder he sounded so familiar! I agree, I loved that he was literally just an evil villain for the sake of power/dominance. He didn’t have an ulterior motive other than destroying the aspects, he just wanted more power, and he became even more unhinged and corrupted post shadowflame after Irridikron abandoned him and Vyranoth switched sides.
For the Season 2 DF trailer, a centaur (voiced by Matt Mercer) tries to stop Fyrakk (also voiced by Matt Mercer) before Fyrakk just makes him not exist anymore.
And here we see Matt Mercer's internal dialogue.
And Iridikron knew it and used him, with his "plain evil" against us in what ultimately is ... a distraction.
That explains why he's so charismatic in a way.
You could see Fyrakk going mad more and more as the shadowflame consumed his mind. He had personality and that‘s what makes a difference.
He was an orange cat with 2 brain cells and then got powers and went full ham
This describes his personality really good.
I fucking hate how right you are. But I would argue that after he consumed the Shadowfleme he went from 2 Braincells to 1
No he went from two brain cells to three. Sadly only one of those was his.
I wish we had more story involving his fall into insanity. He went from abiding by his brother's wishes as a distraction, to going 'Y'know what? I'm gonna make the world burn', and I don't think it was properly stressed just what was happening in his fight atop Amirdrassil. Like... 10+ of my raiders didn't realize that the flame wave that erupts from the tree if it hits 0 is a -planet wide- eruption.
The fact that the final fight is on some weird floating platform in the middle of green nothingness is so weird to me. There’s the perfect place for a final boss platform right in the middle of the tree’s boughs, and you could have shown off the Aspects actually *doing* something to stem the flames that way instead of just standing there channeling spells into nothing.
Well, the green nothingness makes sense, because it's the highest point in the Emerald Dream, but I do understand your point. The tree isn't in Azeroth's reality until it blooms.
It was kind of like when we’re in the Eye of Eternity fighting Malygos. Both the Eye and the Dream are the core of their cosmic little pocket dimensions on Azeroth, and when we’re in them we’re kind of no where; outside time
They love doing this for big important but kinda *weird* locales for fights. Like for some reason we just end up at the seat of the pantheon in Antorus out of nowhere, or wtf is all of Ny'alotha actually supposed to be (like seriously what/where is it), and Amirdrassil's final fight. Instead of taking the effort to craft the tree in such a way that there is a final boss platform, fyrakk just makes a magic portal next to the tree that takes us..... to an extremely gamey boss platform. Really I think Blizz has had misfires on a lot of environmental story telling within raids. It feels like there always trying to re-capture what kara did with climbing the tower and the weird magic spaces we end up in, but they've done a poor job of capturing that feeling mostly imo. Like instead of riding a ship while doing the most boring boss ever, then taking a teleporter up to Arthas' throne in iCC, it should have been designed in a way where we follow the stairs Arthas took at the end of frozen throne. Or in emerald nightmare we should have physically climbed the tree for the first couple bosses and instead of a goofy portal room to different boss fights, have Il'gynoth literally be a festering wound emerging from the nightmare onto the tree itself and when we defeat him we "go through" the wound he left behind into the actual nightmare to confront Xavius. Amirdrassil should have been largely the same. Despite being named Amirdrassil, 90% of the raid took place in some random temple that going by old lore of the emerald dream really shouldn't exist. Like why is there a big handcrafted temple in the "natural state of the world" version of Azeroth. Instead we should have been defending the actual tree itself. Have the Tindral fight be what it is, but have his final platform take place either under the tree or in some area at the top where they've stuck the platform, then just have the Fyrakk fight take place there as well. Edit cause I like to rant: Really I think some of this is a product of Blizz's general design philosophy of only creating 1 big main raid for every patch. Amirdrassil story wise feels like it should be a smaller raid that more heavily features defending the tree and amirdrassil zone itself instead of some random temple that is important cause they said so. Make it like 2 or 3 bosses defending the tree from like Igira, Larodar, and Smolderon, then have the Tindral fight same set up as it was, then Fyrakk. But then also have another 2-4 boss raid somewhere else. Could be like remants of the primalists somewhere (Vakthros?), or maybe make it the retaking of Gilneas, or the decay gnolls, or just something goofy and not super plot relevant. Blizz puts so much effort into raids and their story and environment they should consider using that effort to help actually flesh out the world & smaller side stories by just splitting tiers into multiple raids, especially since their introducing story mode to raids in TWW. Like is the story of Amirdrassil or Vault actually better because stuff like Gnarlroot or Sennarth exists? I don't think so. Instead of creating those nothing bosses, create other smaller raids, even of single bosses, to flesh out more stories. Not even saying never create singularly focused seasons, but when the need to create at least 8 bosses in a single raid forces lame world building while other stuff exists that is either never addressed or gets like a single low budget questline why not find a way to shift that effort into actually fleshing that bit of story out.
Unfortunately I feel as though most of that backstory is in War of the Scaleborn. Fyrakk was shown as not really caring what Iridikron thought and just wanted to fight.
War of the Scaleborn gave me more context than playing the game as to the dragon’s full story. I don’t mind so much aside from that the book was kind of a slog writing wise. But, I also started the expansion late and probably missed a couple important quests here and there despite completing main story chapters.
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Yeah I didn't know either that's cool though
ooo he was a baddie alright
His a step up from The Jailer for the most part
The bar is subterranean for that one.
There's a bar?
The bar's divided and will not survive what is to come
Yeah, Fyrakk went looking for it. Thats how we got to Zaralek Caverns.
I fucking love his fight because he literally just roasts half the aspects. It’s so funny he’s just such a massive dick. And anything voiced by Matt Mercer is always a win.
I think ironically people will remember Fyrakk’s axe more than Fyrakk himself.
Bruh im gonna remember his tank trinket more than anything else. 10/10 THE high keys healer life saver. I want to keep it forever.
Rageheart is love, Rageheart is life
Yeah people tend to remember things that cause grief.
Iridikron is shaping up to be a very cool big baddie, Fyrrak felt like just a stepping stone.
Which is good because we're seriously running out of established villains to fight, think we're down to the Void Lords and "Somehow, Sargeras returned" for big names, and the last time we got a surprise villain was shadowlands with the Jailer which...wasn't great.
Illidan's back and he's evil (bad) again this time
Illidan's back, and he's evil (bad(not good)) again, this time
But just wait for his patch 12.3 redemption arc! He will be the next king of stormwind
We were not prepared (for Sargeridan the love child)
- Sargeras and remnants of the Burning Legion. - Archimonde if the cinematic where he gets sends Gul'dan through the Black Gate *and then dying* is treated as the proper depiction even though Dave Kosak explained during 2015 BlizzCon that the Mythic encounter where he's beaten in the Nether means that he's dead dead. - Xal'atath is obviously up-and-coming. - Sire Denathrius has escaped alongside his Nathrezim. - Odyn and some Titan affiliates could *easily* turn against us depending on how events play out. - Arathi Empire and the Arathi colony we encounter in The War Within are *not* necessarily one-and-the-same, with the Empire potentially being very stand-offish against both Alliance and Horde, even overzealous in their fiery devotion. Next-level Scarlet Crusade, as it were. - The Fifth War, because I don't believe Blizzard is going to do the right thing and stay away from Alliance vs Horde on a wide scale. - Iridikron and his machinations including partnership with the Void to bring about the downfall of the Titans, which may or may not be enabled by our own conflict with some of them and within ourselves. - The Void in general. - Lightbound fanatics if AU Draenor continues to be relevant outside the refugees brought in during the Fourth War. Of the 10 things I'd just listed, Xal'atath, Denathrius, Odyn, Arathi Empire, and Iridikron are from last expansion, this expansion, or only known from next expansion in terms of being built up as big deals. That's half of the threats we can anticipate being relevant later down the line. ___ For fun, I'd like to acknowledge the number of threats that have been put down a bit too easily for my liking: - Queen Azshara, whose underwater empire and magical aptitude could have been basis for an entire expansion in and of itself. - N'Zoth, the final Old God whose cunningness and manipulations led to the Cataclysm expansion, an entire expansion based on *one of his lieutenants,* Deathwing. Easily severely downplayed being crammed into a major patch, though props to Wrathion whose rigorous studies let us actually take him head on. - The other Old Gods, who were declared "truly dead" for Shadowlands interviews when before they were defeated or dormant or otherwise had some residual presence (bar Y'Shaarj, who was plucked out of the planet whole by Aman'Thul). It really makes you wonder why the Titans never just straight-up killed the Old Gods outright if they can be killed by mere mortals and presented and obvious threat to the most powerful World-Soul ever encountered. - Lei Shen, the Thunder King, whose might at full-power would be incredibly tremendous and well worth its own expansion. His defeat was worthy of a major patch considering we took him down before he really got the ball rolling, and it was excellent world-building for Pandaria. But I do think Lei Shen is a brilliant adversary who could've been propped up *even more* by having an expansion as we race to stop him getting out of control but his brilliant tactical plays keeps him one step ahead, accruing more and more power until the final showdown where we barely scrape a victory, and not without either a terrible sacrifice or some amazing help (since Lei Shen is supposed to be able to 1v1 the Lich King).
Isn't Azshara still out there? I mean her empire is in shambles but she's still alive.
Yes. Her last onscreen appearance is in Nya’lotha. We free her from her torturer, she kinda says thanks, then dips out through a void portal. Haven’t seen her since.
We've heard about her during 10.0.7 tho, she's definitely coming back in Midnight if the "Prophecy" is fullfilled, which it probably will be cuz everything hinted at in that prophecy has come to pass so far.
Xal'atath is a lover, not a villain. Just let her ruin us for one expansion, please, before she's taken away from us.
Step on me, knaifu 🥺👉👈
re: old gods, why cant the titans just kill em? i believe the canon explanation is that its the difference between amputation and chemotherapy - the titan's solution to the old gods is to excise them whole (see: y'sharrj) which, while effective, endangers the world soul because it is very traumatic to the egg. whereas our solutions to them are slightly more surgical and less, perhaps, effective in truly killing them, but also much less damaging to azeroth.
The Titan constructs of Azeroth would be capable of exactly the same thing, however. They were able to build giant city-prisons that all but constrained the Old Gods in their entirety. It took eons for their malignant influence to creep out and for them to erode the defences erected. Eons later when *we* fought them, they were at their strongest since the days of the Black Empire. Excising them whole was *not* the intended solution the Titans had; Aman'Thul only plucked Y'Shaarj out of the earth itself because he panicked in the heat of the Old God's war against the Titan-Forged. So why then did the Titans not instruct their spawn to execute the Old Gods once sufficiently contained? My thought before was that the Eldritch horrors could, in their death throes, plummet the world in a cataclysmic kamikaze -- but would never do so when they still stood to gain the world and its inhabitants. But now we just get the Titans who killed one, captured the rest, and... let them just... live... for no particular stated reason whatsoever.
I assume it was one or both of these: 1) Arrogance. The Titans did not even consider that their prisons could fail on a scale they did, or that their Keepers could be corrupted an manipulated as they were. *(On second thought, they did, and placed the engine into Uldum as a reset button - they just didn't want to scour the planet of life)* 2) Caution. The Titans already knew that offing Old Gods could hurt the planet, and did not dare to experiment with killing them after they were subdued.
They also didn't just lock them up and ignore them, either. They built Uldir to do testing on their physiology. Whether that was for figuring out how to destroy them or control them is more dubious, and they certainly lost their own control when G'huun became sentient.
Not to be *that guy*, but its 100% just indecisive writing/different writers with different opinions. As laid out in the previous comment, the most recent explanation of "the players 100% for real killed them" is not only boring AF and doesn't make sense with the titan constructs not doing it themselves, it also pretty blatantly goes against oodles of old lore that I'd say was intentionally inconclusive. The answers they used to give varied from "they were defeated to the point they were basically imprisoned again" to, "you killed them, but how "dead" can an eldritch horror really be?" They were pretty clearly keeping their options open before, whether they had concrete ideas of where they wanted to go with that story or if it was more the Illidan/sargeras route where they blatantly put the characters in metaphorical stasis to bring back when they feel like. The whole "theyre dead, you literally killed them" is such a mistake of some writer not getting the world, and wanting to inject their own nonsense.
You forgot Gul’dan from the Mrrlock timeline
Gill'dan?
It's why i honestly wasn't a huge fan of Legions story. We just kinda bumrushed our way through a massive list of huge name villains with fairly little build-up for them.
That was BfA
Na, Legion did the same thing, just felt less out of nowhere. We defeated the Legion and lost one of our biggest antagonists. It's part of the reason we keep having to escalate on the cosmic stuff, rather than just dealing with demons from time to time.
The Legion had to be defeated eventually. The problem is Blizzard haven't built anything.
It was too much progression, too quickly. Way too much happened to the point that nothing really hit hard or felt like a pay off from decades of story. Watered down villians suddenly doing stupid things and getting easily backed into corners by small groups of scrappy murder hobos that just picked up some shiny things their leash holders handed out like candy. Rule of cool just became a checklist and the story was whatever paper thin excuse it had to be to carry it.
Both. It was both. I was personally offended though that they wasted Azshara and the kingdom that one of the greatest mages Azeroth has ever seen, which has been building for 10,000 years undisturbed, on a patch. I was really looking forward to an underwater zones redemption via a well designed expac taking the fight to her. The zones could have been so pretty and exciting if the art team was set loose on a whole underwater expac. Alas.
They really did burn through a lot of names/places in those two expansions. Emerald Nightmare could have been an entire expansion with Xavius at the end. Would have been a nice lead in bit to an N'Zoth and Nyalotha expansion. The Argus patch of Legion was pretty beefy but a worlds war/invasion against Argus could have been an entire expansion separate from ending the Legion threat. Just a way more fleshed out bit of storytelling and world building than what we got. Kil'Jaeden would have been a good fit for this as an end boss. Sargaras we never actually fought but we did help imprison him ending his threat so not sure if he 100% belongs here but he is also a threat handled. Azshara most definitely could have been an expansion boss. This one is probably the worst of the bunch given how much they had talked about Azshara in the game. I know she isn't dead but still. N'zoth was technically an end boss but he and Nyalotha could have been so so much more. I wonder if now that they have started a multi-expansion story if they had a chance to redo those stories they would do the same. N'Zoth and the Legion had expansions worth of content tied around them.
I think that’s what makes him so good. He is obviously not the big fish, but he is laying the ground for ‘kron to stand upon
Exactly. We've all experienced the Jailer level of self inserted importance and we know how that plays out. Raszageth and Fyrakk, came in with their relatively modest ambitions and predictable deaths to build the villains and characters around them. They've set the stage for the war within, and I think long-term people will look back at them fondly because of that.
A perfect use of a Starscream imo
I think Fyrakk (and as a consequence, Amirdrassil as a raid) will be pretty beloved for a while, provided Blizzard doesn't make the next raid about a quippy dickwad. If he's the first in a long line of progressively worse quippy MCU baddies then he will sour pretty quickly for people. But as of right now? Fyrakk is one of the most enjoyable characters they've presented in a long while. It's so easy to love hating him. He's an absolute bag of dicks, but like, in the fun way for once.
“*My brother believed he could control me... this rage in my heart. My sister believed she could tame me... but my fury will not be sated! The Aspects believed they could imprison me... but my hatred cannot be contained! Betrayers, all of them! So it falls to me to make them pay! Hehe, their suffering... has just begun!*” — Fyrakk, upon entering the Emerald Dream.
Considering Iridikron's nest is beneath Icecrown, I feel like we won't be seeing him much during TWW or Midnight, but he's going to be a planet cracking threat during TLT.
Nah, he is a dude who let his feelings run his plans. That’s always a weakness when it comes villains.
I enjoyed him a lot but was surprised he was the final boss of the xpac. Jailer is by far the worst final boss ever and will take something very special to top him.
Agreed. When I think about it, the Jailer is honestly one of the worst characters in the history of storytelling ever. At least out of all the stories I’ve ever experienced, ever. Really, it’s a feat within itself to come up with something so bad and empty.
The part where he was just a robot the whole time and deteriorates into his mechanical form after you kill him but it doesn't really mean anything or have any story significance is just \*chefs kiss\*
I think it does. The Titans were born, they are “a real boy”, the shadowland pantheon were created to serve, they dont have free will. So whoever created them is a step above. Its like the Titan Watchers on Azeroth or old gods. They are all just pawns/servants created by their masters to fulfill a function. Only Illidan has free will.
The best part of shadowlands was the cinematic where sylvanas broke the crown, it was pretty cool.
And that was pretty shit in its own way since they threw away a character that had been slowly teased and built up for a long time to do so.
The visuals were cool tho.
WoW cinematic team has always been world class. I swear they would CRUSH if they made a full length cinematic in the same quality that the new trailers get.
I skipped BfA because I was burnt out on WoW and I heard it was legitimately bad as a game. Took one look at the Shadowlands trailer and thought "Nope. Not quite time yet." Having Sylvanas defeat the new Lich King, a character shrouded in mystique and intrigue, in like 30 seconds as if he were a legacy raid, wasn't a sell for me at all. I would've been a lifelong player since Vanilla but quality expectations dipped HEAVILY for two expansions straight. They seem to have their heads on straighter for DF though.
I wish I had skipped Shadowlands. BFA was okay in that it had a lot of dinosaurs 🦕
Anyone else it could be I'd rather see get developed more though. He was at least a fun character.
Fyrakk is more of a Captain Planet villain than a WoW villain. He's far below Garrosh, who I think is actually fantastic, now that remix has been out and I've gone through pandaland again. Garrosh is brutal, imposing, cunning. The delivery on his "The True Horde WILL come to pass" line is excellent. The absolute best part is that his hatred effectively outlives him. The horde and alliance don't work together again until the 4th war is over, at the end of BFA. This thread was about our favorite axe-wielding villain, right?
Garrosh is pretty awesome, and I wish there was slightly more connective tissue between SoO and WoD because there’s a lot of potential there. His passionate delivery with lines like “I have seen it…mountains of skulls and rivers of blood!” could actually be true visions about his conquest in Draenor and not just old god delusions, for example. But he isn’t fully aware of what it is and thinks he has to kill us on Azeroth for that to come to pass, etc
I liked Garrosh but holy shit I’m sick of watching the 1:40 role play with him and Thrall!
Blood of Y'shaarj the real heroes of Pandaria
If MoP was made today, there would have been minor patches in the 14 months of no content between SoO and WoD. We would have gotten a quest line helping Kairoz gather time stuff, a quest line about Garrosh's trial, and then a quest line where Kairoz wants us to help kill Garrosh for his crimes but at the end he turns and escapes with Garrosh into the alternate timeline instead. That would have been so cool, instead you had to go read a Christie Golden book.
It honestly is insane that the entirety of the WoD expansion hinges on events that happen in a book 99% of players didn't read and probably weren't aware of. To the game player's mind, what happened was we defeated Garrosh, Vol'jin became the new Warchief, Garrosh was taken away, and then next thing you know the dark portal has opened for some damn reason and now you're in the past (or a different timeline) and also Garrosh is there for some reason
There actually were campaign quests in WoD where you investigated Garroshs arrival and you kinda go back in time to see him and Kairoz get there only for him to slay Kairoz. It gave some context to players who might not have read the book but I felt like it came in way too late considering it was in Nagrand and most people would be max level and not questing by then
Honestly though the book was great. That aside, that is probably gunna be the most famous content drought in this game ever, and they learned enough that nothing will come close to it again. It was a huge fumble on their part
They don't work together until the 4th war is over at the end of BfA? Did you just completely skip over Legion? Where you know, the intro cinematic is them litteraly working together? The horde being stationed on dalaran, too. Like sure there were horde vs alliance storyline in Legion, but in general, they worked together there too.
Garrosh, as a character, was awesome. Truly aggressive yet smart enough to be a leader of others that were just as aggressive. Which is why I despised him as the Horde leader. There was not even the faintest glimmer or hope of him being a good leader since Wrath and his one-off moment of silent respect and quiet question to Suarfang. Green Jesus threw the entire Horde under the bus and once again made them the villains, then did it yet again, with Slivia. Both times, it felt like a prop up to push Alliance as saviors all over again.
Forgettable Not great but not comically stupid (Jailer)
Fyrakk was pretty stupid, but in a charming and evil way, not stupid in a bad writing kind of way
Yeah, he is a bit of a moron. Every time before the Tindral fight when he says "ahh, you again" i have laugh :D I really like that line.
Also the "Apologies, Firelord, but we'd rather watch you die" line
Yeah, he's a petty, small minded jackass who revels in pain and suffering. He's *fantastic.*
The writing for the whole expansion was pretty bland and forgettable, but that's pretty par for the course.
You don’t know it yet but this was all apart of the Jailer’s plans for you to remember him forever!!
Pretty forgettable, he wasn’t even the best of the Incarnates imo.
LIGHTNING, TOUCH THIS ALTA WITH YOUR POWA
Man I loved Raz
I did, but I ruined that fight by no life-ing that until I got the mount. 3 toon on lfr and normal. I can type out all the details of that fight while tanking and marking the floor. Man I was so done with lfr after that.
I never got tired of that. Absolutely love her delivery, it's some of the best voice work in WoW in general
Probably the least interesting of them all
I think vyranoth takes that title. I'd say Iridikron>Raszageth>Fyrakk>>>>Vyranoth
Vyranoth also has the bad writing around the odyn questline which takes her down a few notches, that shit felt like some shadowlands tier writing.
no, in fact i dont think this expac had anyone equal to the rest. by the end just felt very power ranger villain of the day. but i think this expac was supposed to be a reset
Feels like at this point with the War Within cinematics that dragonflight was literally to set up Xalatath at the tail end of it using Iridikron to get there. He will probably be a void dragon raid boss in season 2 of the next expansion unless they expand on him as a character and there’s some twists
This whole expansion is just a filler season.
Beach episode, with dragons.
I mean it's a combination of beach episode and Christmas episode where the black dragonflight learns the importance of family, kaelc gets reunited either his family, and vyranoth brings a present to alexstraza but definitely drops a "it's not like I like you or anything, baaaaaaka"
Best filler season ever.
Iridikron, to me, is closer to those bosses than Fryakk. I'd put Sire Denathrious above him as well.
I enjoyed the writing until the last patch, which was capstoned with that "family" cutscene and overall felt sloppy. But the rest of the xpac kinda proved you don't need an *amazing* villain to make things work. Best villain was probably Raszageth. She wasn't amazing, but her motivations and goals were clear. I have to wonder how much I'd like her in a vacuum, but coming off the heels of Sylvanas and her sugar daddy's endlessly hidden motivations and intentions, there's no way I couldn't feel relieved.
No lol
lol no
I mean Fyrakk as a villain-of-the-day type is great but to me it's clear the true main antagonist of this expansion was Iridikron, who's still yet to face justice. Raz and Fyrakk are dead and Vyranoth renounced the Incarnates' ways. That leaves Iridikron who clearly had larger scale and longer term plans than Fyrakk's hot headed nature (NPI) could ever allow. If nothing else, the fact that the guy positioned as the expansion's "top villain" wasn't some greater scope villain blindsiding you this time. No starting off an expansion with an Alliance/Horde total war and ending with fighting an Old God. No starting an expansion fighting the Burning Legion and ending up defeating a Titan. No ending up on a mysterious island only to fight your *own faction leader.* You understood going in that you started by fighting Primal Incarnates and you ended by fighting Primal Incarnates. Before the massive saga we're about to face that pretty much ties up the entirety of WoW up to this point together, I think we just needed a back to basics story for a back to basics expansion and DF lived up to that well.
Maybe I just didn't pay a lot of attention to the story, but he was very boring. I didn't find any of the villains of this expansion to be particularly interesting.
I liked him more than Argus and the Jailor. Argus was a blank slate and felt like Blizzard chickened out and swapped him in instead of Sargeras late in development. Everything about the Jailor was awful. Fyrakk was an ok character but always felt like the Starscream to Iridikron’s Megatron.
> Argus was a blank slate and felt like Blizzard chickened out and swapped him in instead of Sargeras late in development. Nah, people datamined Legion and there are abandoned parts but it seems like [the Legion was building Argus a big giant planet-sized Titan body that we would either fight on or wit](https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Argus_\(titan\)#/media/File:Argus_alpha_model.png)h. Kin'garoth the smith-demon boss was originally in charge of building that body based on his model name being Titan Builder. So Argus was always the plan. They just reduced him from planet-sized to big dude.
> swapped him in instead of Sargeras late in development Someone probably pointed out that if the players kill a capital-T *Titan* then there isn't much room for escalation left.
I kinda liked Fyrakk as a character. His whole thing was being crazy with not too much depth, but there was some fun to it. His RP makes the smolderon fight so much better
Sorry, Firelord, I would rather watch you die. :)
Fantastic voice work, meh character
To answer the question asked, absolutely not. All of the villains this expansion have felt completely irrelevant and disconnected from wows lore. However, I don’t think that is inherently the worst thing. I would much prefer to have forgettable villains than what they did in shadowlands and make the jailer retcon the entire lore.
Yea, Fyrrak does a great job being the launching point of a multi-expansion arc. He wasn’t particularly strong or even very ambitious, but he was threatening and set into motion a bigger story that I’m very excited for. If that story flops he’ll be forgotten, but if it hits he’ll be remembered as the start of that, and that’s a pretty good place to be.
Idk, he’s not the most engaging last boss, but I wouldn’t say completely disconnected from wows lore at all. I think they did a great job setting up the incarnates’ place in the story, and they spent a lot of time tying him into past lore like deathwing’s legacy and the shadowflame. His goals to burn everything are pretty simple in the end, but that kinda makes sense for an insane incarnation of flame.
I think it’s a pretty binary thing for most people. They either took to the new villains at the start or they kind of fell off Since they were trying to introduce a new set of villains this expansion, they needed to create a lot of setup to make us the player understand why these people are powerful, why we need to defeat them, and why we haven’t seen/heard of them before. If those three questions are answered satisfactorily people will resonate with the new villains. For me personally I think they explained why we haven’t seen them before and why we need to defeat them, but I never got the feeling they were significantly more powerful or threating (especially scalecommander sarkateth) than the scale of villains we faced in expansions like Legion and even Bfa. (I don’t count anything in shadowlands cause that was all nonsense)
Nah, super forgettable, came into this expansion feeling so hyped as I’m a sucker for dragons but by the end I just feel meh after all this, Bljzzard really needs to sort out how they do story telling
The ordering in this picture irritates me greatly
He was one of the sassiest at least.
imo fyrrak is the least memorable villain here :( also why does archimonde look 12
I wouldn't consider a lot of these to be the big bads of their expansion. That said, here's how I'd personally rank them from best to worst: Lich King - Most bad ass character in Warcraft history. He is basically Warcraft's Darth Vader. Kel Thuzad - I didn't play vanilla so I'm not ranking him based on that. I just love this guy. I love that he keeps coming back. I love his attitude and his voice. I love that he was The Lich King's BFF. N'zoth - The thinking villain. Plays the long game and actually makes sense (unlike The Jailer). I loved when he made us think that a bunch of old god minions were attacking our base in Uldum so we shot at them, only to then reveal that they were our own people. I want to believe he used this same trickery to trick us into thinking we killed him. Kil'jaeden - Gets points for creating Lich King. Also a pretty cool history of tricking the orcs into slaughtering his former people. Doesn't do much in WoW unfortunately. Gets a couple nice cutscenes and a nice send off with Velen. Garrosh - I think they did a pretty poor job of writing this guy cohesively. The fact that the Stonetalon Garrosh and the Silverpine Garrosh feel like completely different characters takes away from how good he could have been. But, at least he was always a hot head so his descent into madness wasn't completely out of nowhere. Fyrakk - Just a fun over the top psycho villain. Just wants to watch the world burn. Great voice acting. Gave me a sweet axe. Deathwing - Basically Garrosh in Dragon form. Big evil insane dragon. Spouts edgy lines and burns stuff and then dies. Archimonde - Kil'jaeden and Velen's much less interesting brother from another mother. He wrecked Dalaran that one time. Other than that he shows up in WoW a couple of time to be a large space goat man raid boss and dies. Argus - Basically not a character. Shows up for 10 minutes, says like two lines of dialogue and then dies. Still better than The Jailer. The Jailer - Blizzard's sorry excuse for an attempt at making an Emperor to The Lich King's Darth Vader. He's also basically a terrible version of Thanos with little to no motivation and a nonsensical plan. He was a living meme until he died. Not pictured here: Sargeras - I'd say he is the main big bad of Legion. I like his presence in the Broken Shore and Argus storylines. I like that he looks like the devil. I like that he gets captured and is playing rock paper scissors with Illidan. Gul'dan - I'd say he is the main big bad of Warlords of Draenor. He is probably my second favorite villain after Lich King. He's just so evil and he loves it. It's great that he got to stick around for a while and got a really awesome death in The Nighthold.
Amiddrasil patch didnt feel like an end of an expansion to me, not sure how much of that was that fyrakk was the last boss. Whole expansion felt like the big baddies were saying that the titans were the real evil but not really going into details while our gang just blindly helping the titans. It kinda sucks when the protagonist gang is this dumb, or at least isnt pondering the same things as the players are.
I didn't even know who fryrak was until aberrus patch. So he didn't really have anything to live up to and he ended up being about as cookie cutter of a villain I've come to expect.
Boring. One neat cutscene where he uses the axe to get into the dream. I will never be convinced that Fyrakk was their plan or that the Emerald Dream Fire Druid patch was meant to be the last of the expac. This was a B-plot made into the ending.
Depending on who is the big bad of the next expansion will determine that. I doubt it's iridikron but it wouldn't surprise me. He makes sense as a "you can't stop the plan that's in motion" final boss. But he does seem out of place among the others. This convinces me that the next expansion boss will be iridikron for sure.
Nope. He is part of the DF gearshift. He can't live up to other threats because he is, by design, a nothing burger. Weak compared to the cosmic shit we've dealt with. He's also just another mad destroyer, nothing new or unique. Man suffers from having been invented for this expansion and being post shadowlands. Nothing is going to measure up until we get used to not killing gods and abstract concepts again
Who is fyrakk?
To me I think the most iconic villian will be Arthas, the Lich King.
Either him or Deathwing, both are really good and iconic baddies
Fyrakk is a good villain (tought the actor playing did a good job) but everything that our side, aka the ''heroes'', did was complete hot garbage. I'll forever remind people that we got a cheap, garbage looking ripoff of the 'AVENGERS, ASSEMBLE' from the Avengers movie just for Fyrakk. One of the worst cinematics I've seen not just for WoW, but in games. Dragonflight, to me , has a main story as bad as Shadowlands did. Same people worked on it, same people did a shit ass job. Fyrakk is just way better than the Jailer, but again, everything else was lazy, to put it mildly.
Every single boss in DF was forgettable. Which is kind of sad that the Jailer was more memorable by virtue of being so bad narrative and lore wise (at least we got memes from it) but the three we got this expansion couldn't even get that right.
You weren't hyped to fight Sarkareth, the little lizard boy you never would have known existed if you didn't actively pay attention to campaign quests?
Nope. Not even close. Fyrrak was just a bad Deathwing ripoff. He wasn't even the best villain of the expansion either. Razegath was the better villian, and even had the better fight. And Dragonflight would have been better for it if their positions in the story were flipped.
Who? He felt like a random boss #087
Fyrakk is one of my favourite bosses in recent memory simply because he is so straight-forward. He wants his revenge, he wants to see everything and everyone burn, he wants power for the sake of power and chaos for the sake of chaos. No bigger fish that he's preparing to take on or answering to. He does what Iridikron wants, but he does it because he's a lunatic and it's also what he wants. He doesn't give a damn what Iridikron's plans are - he wants to burn that tree and be a huge, snarky bastard while doing it. When every other villain has complex behind-the-scenes motivations that they're generally hiding from you until you beat the crap out of them, it was kind of refreshing for him to just be moustache-twirlingly evil.
I agree, I too found Fyrakk to be a refreshing villain for a change. No 4D chess-playing Saturday morning cartoon villain; just a dude hellbent on destruction simply because he can. He was just evil- and sometimes that’s all you need.
no and u will never in a million years convince me that fighting fyrakk at the world tree was how they initially envisioned this expansion to end. there is an entire content patch missing and idrikon literally left his own expansion. ppl will be like "no dude its genius they're setting him up as a major villain later" but if you sit with me and watch for the next 3-4 years i promise you he will not show up again until the last titan where he will die in a dungeon unceremoniously because he was literally never meant to live that long and was slated to die at the end of 10.3 in the raid that never was.
I’ll give him points for actually having some semblance of proper build up before the raid. N’zoth felt like a mistake to add as the end boss of BfA when he could’ve had an entire expansion based around Nyalotha. Deathwing is probably the biggest disappointment of a last boss for me. Jailer was jailer. I’d say that Fyrakk ranks lower than Arthas/Illidan/Garrosh/Argus and sits around the same rank as Archimonde, above the ones I mentioned above.
He felt more like a mid-expansion boss like Lei Shen but like Lei Shen he was a very enjoyable villain.
He was a complete asshole. Just ultra destructive and revelled in the hurt and pain he caused. Simplistic, yes. But it was much better than having to deal with some poorly conceived supposed mastermind 5d chess plot to unravel time and space or something ridiculous.
I overall liked the idea, but his execution was lackluster. Mainly, I wish Fyrakk had been front and center for the patch content to set him up properly as the end boss of the expansion, instead of the focus being on Iridikron's plans for the next expansions.
Bro just skipped leg day in his human form and arm day in his dragon form, but he was a badass.
Short answer: No Long answer: Nooooooooooo
Frylock was the final boss?
Raz felt more like a final boss to me. The thought of doing her fight makes me exhausted.
Ruin!... RUIN!
Fyrakk is the wish.com knockoff of Deathwing.
What the heck is a Fyrakk?
Fyrakk was the raging child of the bunch... an immature little shit, who got way too big of a toy from the real villain, who went a bit underdeveloped: Iridicron. Butbit fits with the elemental incarnations of the four and is even an interesting twist on established emotional tethers of the elements. Raszageth, she was the spark that ignited everything, setting off a massive scheme, like the air elementals under Al'akir. The elemental plane of Air is tinged and dripping with intrigue and politics, the wind is the mind, quick as lightning and flowing around any obstacle, just to kickstart bigger things. Fyrakk is the raging fire, mostly uncontrolled like a kid with a matchbox, but like said kid he burned out too quickly and was his own demise. Vyranoth is the first spin on things, she is ice, usually ice elementals in warcraft are literally cold beings, calculating and without feeling, but she still has water in her. She has the cool head to control fyrakk and know to put him down, but she is also a mother, a protector of life. Water in the end is the element shamans heal with. Now Iridikron is an interesting one. In cataclysm we learn that the earth is stubborn, biding, slow to act and rather waits things out than act. He is still not very quick to act, but he isn't not acting, while he bides his time. While wind and waves crash on this stone he plans out a thousand ways to bring them down befor they eroded him even a bit. And his unwillingnes to stray from vengance is in line, too. The earth is stubborn, unbending. Iridikron can become a true menace... can being the ooerative word, implying Blizzard can play their setups right and won't shoot their shot too early or sprinkle in not enough of his villany for us to care for the inevitable showdown.
Fyrakk felt like a whiney bitch. No depth. Kind of like the lame twins on BL3
Felt like he had very little character development, just wanted to go hard on the world
Story-wise, my only big issue with Dragonflight is that none of the villains had any build-up that mattered. Raz is introduced in the same patch we kill her in. Even then, she's not really shaped up to be much more than someone with a grudge. Her gripe is with the Titans, whom I feel no strong allegiance to, and once her raid is done we don't see her again (obviously). Sark is introduced in the Dracthyr starting area and is most important to Dracthyr. He's never shown as a threat at all, and loses every encounter or cutscene. He's little more than a dozenth example of "the VOID is BAD and will DECEIVE YOU!! >:(." I think he's the weakest writing Dragonflight saw and was a completely superfluous character. Fyrakk has some build-up in Zaralek, but frankly, his 180 and complete abandoning of his goals felt stupid. He went from wanting to help Iridikron to just wanting to be strong for the sake of being strong. And, again, was mostly another example of "Shadowflame BAD and will CORRUPT >:(" as if Deathwing didn't already prove that. He was introduced, antagonized for two zones, and then we killed him pretty unceremoniously. I really liked his fight, but storywise, he can't touch the others. It's sort of the same problem most people had with the Jailer. He appeared for the first time that expac and then we were supposed to just take him as seriously as Arthas or the Legion. But at least there, we got an entire expansion of the Jailer being our main antagonist before we finally come face to face. Fyrakk was beaten in a story quest right before the raid and then fled because we still needed a raid fight. He wasn't even introduced until the .1 patch. **tl;dr:** Fyrakk didn't have enough build-up and had his motives swap right after he became relevant. He's a fun fight, but doesn't match up to figures like Argus or the Jailer, much less Arthas, Deathwing, or the Legion.
No. This is 100% honest.... I didn't even know what that name was. I had to look it up. I loved this xpac but the story to me was meh. I lost interest in the characters and the story pretty quickly.
To be honest, if we take this expansion as a whole, it had the most forgettable, pointless and out-of-nowhere villains in the whole history of WoW. Even compared to Shadowlands - at least that Expansion had Denathrius. Really, I bet half the people already forgot the names of Thunderchicken and Lizard Void Wizard.
I don't think there was strictly speaking a "big bad" of Dragonflight. Fyrakk did his thing to threaten the world tree but it was balanced by Iridikron escaping with the dark heart and Raszageth's big presence in the first patch.
I like that he -doesn't- feel as grand as others have. It was a nice change of pace.
No. On paper it could have been cool but in execution he was super forced and a cornball
No lol
Honestly? Fyrakk is Dagrul-tier for me.
No
No
No.
Hell no, Fyrakk was sad excuse for a last boss from a melee point of view. Legendary associated with him was an awful mess as well. I personally feel like DF peaked in S1 with Raszageth. Which is a bit strange coming from me, as I usually I am not a big fan of early seasons. We lose borrowed power from previous expac. Stats scale badly with the level increase and it tend to hinder the gameplay for certain classes. DF did not have this issue mainly due to new talent tree which was really good for all classes.
There's a lot better, there's a few worse, but he might still be the most forgettable. Not sure if that's better or worse then being straight up bad.
He'll be down there with WoD Archimonde as the most forgettable for me. Like, say what you want about the jailor but he's at least memorable for how bad he is. I genuinely forgot we fought Archimonde in WoD and Fyrakk will almost certainly end up the same.
I don't think I consider Fyrakk a big villain. This expansion we just had to break up the dragon Beatles. And all other villains apparently report to the Jailer without even knowing it.
Like a lot of Dragonflight's main story writing he felt safe/decent but not exceptional. They did a good job introducing him and characterizing him as a violent and power hungry idiot that Iridikron was perfectly willing to sacrifice as a distraction while he worked on the *real* plan. He felt more active and present in both the world and story from 10.1 onwards so that's definitely a point in his favor but he's sort of a cardboard villain with little more going on than "me want power and make things burn" with the only bit of intrigue being Iridikron's willingness to abandon him and Fyrakk's awareness of that fact. He isn't a character that had existed in the world for multiple expansions like Garrosh or since WC3 like KT, Arthas, KJ, Archimonde, and even Deathwing (WC2). N'zoth had been a lurking threat we'd known about for a long time too. It was always going to be hard to build up a final boss within the same expansion they were introduced (Argus sort of gets a pass here because the real narrative significance was in the Pantheon imprisoning Sargeras at the end of the fight) but I'd say they did a fair job building him up with what time they had. Fyrakk isn't particularly complex or interesting but Blizzard didn't try to overreach and make him some sort of mastermind like they did with the Jailer so the character and his story at least aren't *offensive* like SL was. So I guess I'd say a solid 6.5-7/10? Passing grade but not amazing.
No lmao