World of Warcraft Has a Villain Problem

gamerant.com:

World of Warcraft players have finally defeated The Jailer and brought peace to the Shadowlands in the latest raid, The Sepulcher of the First Ones. As The Jailer died, he declared that the cosmos would not be ready for what is to come. His entire plan, his entire reason for existing, was to reshape reality with him in charge so that he could save everyone. While this is a noble and flawed mission, it is not the first time that a World of Warcraft villain has had this goal.

Almost every World of Warcraft expansion begins with the introduction of a big bad villain or a world-ending crisis. Players then fight back against this new evil over a couple of years of updates and content. It always climaxes with the players confronting this big bad, killing them, and then a cutscene plays where the big bad has their final monologue and the next bad is teased. As World of Warcraft gets more expansions, it also gets more big bads, but each villain seems to have the same motivations as the last and that creates a storytelling problem.

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World of Warcraft villains tend to fall into two distinct categories of evil; they either want to gain as much power as possible or they want to control everything so that they can defend reality against an even bigger villain. While some choose to just cause chaos, the majority of the main villains fall into those two categories. As more expansions are released, it seems more of the villains land in the second category.

In The Burning Crusade and Legion, players have to combat against The Burning Legion, an army of demons led by the mad titan Sargeras. For multiple expansions, Sargeras was the looming threat, the great villain of reality that the