Awesome idea!
I would've enjoyed that a great deal more than being Thrall's lackey while he gets to play with the Dragon Soul.

" I don't get the sense of scale - Deathwing is SO big that I can't actually see enough of him to feel the size of it."

I know exactly what you're talking about. I had that same problem with Ragnaros...back in Vanilla.


"The fights themselves have no real "boss" that you're fighting, so I never feel like I'm killing Deathwing, so much as I'm killing adds and the boss just never shows up."

I truly do not understand this sentiment. Deathwing is Deathwing. The tentacles you deal with in Spine and Madness are Deathwing. The plates you blow off *using his own sentient blood* is Deathwing. The limbs are *obviously* Deathwing - being separate "NPCs" seems like a ridiculous distinction to focus on.


The two quotes I took from your post seem at odds with one-another. How do you handle gigantic villains without breaking them down into individual NPCs?

@loop

"I truly do not understand this sentiment. Deathwing is Deathwing. The tentacles you deal with in Spine and Madness are Deathwing. The plates you blow off *using his own sentient blood* is Deathwing. The limbs are *obviously* Deathwing - being separate "NPCs" seems like a ridiculous distinction to focus on."

Are they? Deathwing to me was a clever, scheming dragon - a force of personality powerful enough that an army of Twilight cultists answered to him, even if he in turn answered to N'zoth. If what Deathwing is now is just a mess of tentacles, then he's not an interesting villain. Tentacles don't have motivation or character.

To put it another way, in real life, would you rather speak to someone, or speak to their tumour?

"The two quotes I took from your post seem at odds with one-another. How do you handle gigantic villains without breaking them down into individual NPCs?"

You don't, IMO. I will be thrilled beyond words if in Mists of Pandaria we get a person to fight, and if the person can have a political or ideological motivation like all our favourite WoW personalities already do. Arthas coasted on a wave of "my motivation is killing everyone" because he was a complex character before his fall, but even after that, he remained a real entity that engaged with us and could strategize and interact with us.

To Kolyarut: I don't get the tentacles comment. If that makes a villain bad, then why do people profess their love for Ulduar? Wasn't that the majority of the Yogg-Saron fight? It was loaded with adds (including parts of Yogg-Saron himself) and even included up to four Keepers helping you out...just like the Aspects in Madness.


In general: I also don't understand why people insist Deathwing should've been much like Arthas. I'd rather not fight the same villain in every expansion pack. That gets boring quick. I much prefer a different story with different villains with different styles.

"To Kolyarut: I don't get the tentacles comment. If that makes a villain bad, then why do people profess their love for Ulduar? Wasn't that the majority of the Yogg-Saron fight? It was loaded with adds (including parts of Yogg-Saron himself) and even included up to four Keepers helping you out...just like the Aspects in Madness."

That is true, to an extent - though with the old gods themselves the tentacles are the body itself, rather than a disease or parasite that's infested the body. But perhaps I'm not the best person to ask about that, I'm not a big fan of the old gods in general as recurring villains. Ulduar is a special case as it's just loaded with special art and concepts and ultimately a more interesting end-of-world event with Algalon's impending re-origination - even if Yogg is the reason you're there, he's a very minor part of the appeal, IMO.

Though the point about the keepers - we'd just rescued these people from the grip of Yogg-Saron's insanity; they clearly weren't in a position to fight YS themselves. The Dragon Aspects are in a position to fight Deathwing, and do. There barely seems any point us chopping all his limbs off, then beating up his helpless, sad little head.

"In general: I also don't understand why people insist Deathwing should've been much like Arthas. I'd rather not fight the same villain in every expansion pack. That gets boring quick. I much prefer a different story with different villains with different styles."

I absolutely agree that in an ideal world we should have a new, interesting style of villain each expac. Pre-WoW, Deathwing's style was interesting, but in Cata itself he lost it all.

"The Dragon Aspects are in a position to fight Deathwing, and do. There barely seems any point us chopping all his limbs off, then beating up his helpless, sad little head."

But that's not how the fight plays out. They assist the heroes throughout the fight, then finish Deathwing off only after the heroes have defeated him. At no point do they fight Deathwing themselves.

It's interesting to me how perceptions have shifted in WoW. I recall back during Burning Crusade that there was a BIG backlash about Illidan being a raid boss. The primary complaint was "Illidan is going to be killed by 25 random people? That's stupid! He's a major lore character and shouldn't die to a faceless mob!" The same complaint cropped up again with Malygos in Wrath. "We're going to kill an ASPECT? 25 normal mortals? How lame." There was respect at the time for the scope and lore of these bosses. These days the latest cries have been "screw the lore, I want it all to be about ME!"

Personally, I think that demeans the lore characters, in this case Deathwing. To allow 10-25 of us to kill this huge world-ending dragon that's been built up to be nigh-invincible and nearly immune to the powers of the Aspects, with no help at all, seems ludicrous. I think Uriul's suggestion of the Aspects "powering" us has merit, but they DO actually help us directly in the Madness fight! Each one gives us a passive and a semi-active buff. It's perhaps just not as obvious as it should be.

Anyway, I find it interesting how player perception has shifted. Perhaps it's shifted because so many more people are able to raid these days.

They do assist throughout the fight, but it's not very clear why there needs to be a fight in the first place if they can just channel an instagib spell that one shots him. Again, we fight a bunch of stuff, but it's filler to pad out the time until someone else does something important...

@ Skarn

I'm not sure that player perceptions have shifted, so much as people who dislike the fights dislike different aspects of them. People who complained about Illidan being killed by 25 people aren't necessarily the same people complaining about lore characters assisting us killing deathwing, after all.

And if they are, they probably just like complaining and are latching onto a convenient point to complain about.

I still don't see that in the Madness fight, though. We aren't delaying Deathwing for an instagib from the Aspects. All the Aspects, even Thrall, are actively assisting us in the fight. They're not channeling the instagib or anything.

My take on the fight is that they *can't* just instagib him. They need him to be defeated, or weakened enough, first, which is essentially what happens. After defeating his head, he pulls back and flails his useless stumps around, on the verge of death. The instagib just makes sure he's completely eradicated and no tainted parts of him get away.