How genius is the Jailer in World of Warcraft? So genius. So much so that it’s ridiculous – as one player chillingly points out.
The Jailer does not sit well with WoW players as a villain. Especially the notion that he is behind all the developments in the story of World of Warcraft disturbs many players who express their discontent in the subreddit.
What’s going on? A post by “ComicalyLame” has received exceptional attention in the WoW subreddit and is almost showered with awards. The text is naturally exaggerated, but it also clearly shows what many find troubling about the story and the supposed genius of the Jailer. Because when you break down “the grand plan” into individual steps, the whole approach of the Jailer comes off as unintentionally ridiculous.
We have translated the text for you. You can view the original English version in the WoW subreddit.
First things first. Since we know that virtually everything that has happened in Warcraft originates from the Jailer, let’s check what kind of “Galaxy Brain” he must have had to make all this happen.
Now that it has more or less been confirmed that the Arbiter from Argus was taken out, who he just nose-scoped – what had to happen for that to occur?
Imagine you are the Jailer (terrible, I know, but try it) and you’ve been locked up by your colleagues from your improvisation team. Now you have to convince one of the people who just BANISHED YOU TO SUPER HELL that he’s now your friend. You know how prisoners manage to convince the guards and then have them work for them – something like that.
Now you need to convince the warden to create the best espionage industry that has ever existed. A simple plan, badabing, badaboom, done. Now you use this espionage system to make pure chaos and void beings attack random planets. Then you use that to corrupt a being of pure justice. All straightforward stuff.
This is where the Jailer’s genius really shines. Ensure that your own army is now working for the corrupted titan and is strong enough to destroy entire galaxies, except for that one random planet that for some reason has all the important things. Now make sure that this titan, who doesn’t know he’s working for you, is just out of reach of fulfilling his plan – for several millennia.
Now the fun part begins. Use the spies to convince one of the titan’s allies to create a zombie guy, with the express goal of having a special hat and killing/reviving a random elf who will become important later.
Make sure the humans win so that the bad guys come back later and then let the hat guy die so that the elf lady can be expected to try to un-revive herself, so she can see the big bald man. Make her an offer she can’t refuse and start manipulating even more things from behind the scenes.
Now comes my favorite part. Ensure that this orc, who has some genocidal tendencies, completely loses his mind and later stands trial in Pandaria. That’s when you obviously time travel to another dimension so that another random orc can come into the main dimension and summon the titan you’ve been keeping in the background the entire time. Your super mega power death plan relies on interdimensional time travel.
With this once-dead orc back in the main timeline, make sure the titan guy gets to the planet he has more or less ignored up to now and ensure that his army is good enough at killing but not good enough to win. Now expect that these random people on the planet make a series of strange decisions that lead to the main base of the bad guy being transferred into their solar system. Because the base is right here, they can fight the literal titan of death and you must hope that they win.
Because they obviously have won, the death titan destroys this random robot lady and the real game begins. All that other stuff was child’s play. Turn the sleeper agent elf lady completely evil and inevitably ensure that she breaks the hat you left on this planet for JUST this moment.
Congratulations, now you can pull a blonde boy into the DEATH ZONE and use him to get a shiny circle of a person and that’s it, the mortals will give you the rest, don’t worry.
You did it. You gathered all the Lego pieces you need to find your super suit and reshape/annihilate/reverse/reform reality/health.
That was a pretty simple plan if you think about it. Just took half an hour to write that down — the plan. I mean, that was the plan. From the very beginning.
ComicalyLame in the WoW subreddit
Community celebrates the text: Although the text is obviously quite cynical and sarcastic, it is well-received in the subreddit. It received more than 3,500 upvotes and over 30 awards, along with some complementary comments, such as from Izaruu:
Don’t forget that he had to empower a specific demon watcher to stab a particular troll so that he could promote the elf sleeper agent to warchief, allowing her to do sleeper agent things and start wars that sent millions of souls to the super hell.
What is actually the problem? Many players are disturbed by the Jailer, especially after it became clear that he is likely behind most major incidents of the Warcraft universe. For many, this greatly depreciates the last 20 years of the Warcraft series and leads to characters like Arthas, Sargeras, Gul’dan, or Sylvanas losing more and more agency and personality. Since almost all characters have been manipulated by the Jailer in one way or another, it casts a peculiar light on the past of these heroes and villains.
Moreover, all the steps of the Jailer are so numerous and at times absurd when taken as a whole, that it hardly makes sense what he has actually done. This only causes more players to long for the end of Shadowlands and thus the disappearance of the Jailer.
What do you think of this portrayal of the Jailer? Completely exaggerated? Or unfortunately very accurate and exactly what the problem with WoW is?
