I'm not really that excited about fighting Grommash Hellscream. I'm sure the fight will have interesting mechanics, and I'm sure I'll enjoy the gameplay of fighting through a raid to get to him, but as far as a character, I'm not really invested.
And that's kind of weird. Hellscream, and all the Warlords of Draenor, are characters who have existed now for twenty years (or close - I don't know how many specific names were mentioned in WC1.)
Hellscream was really kind of a supporting player in the story of the Horde until Warcraft III. He was basically the most vicious and bloodthirsty Orc of the Old Horde, and he threatened to take his people down that path a second time during the Third War, only to be rescued by Thrall and to immediately thereafter earn a kind of redemption through death.
That is, I think, enough story to build on to make him into a compelling threat - even if we're talking about an alternate-universe version of him.
But I think Blizzard has made an error in communicating the story of Draenor. The expectation, I think, is that we're all invested in these old figures of the Old Horde, but given that most people came in with either WCIII or WoW, we were never really that into those characters in the first place. What these guys need is screen time.
The problem, though, is that they haven't gotten much. Most of the Warlords are dead. Other than the Tanaan Jungle intro, only a couple of them have shown up more than a couple times. It's a little shocking, for example, to have only seen Kargath twice - once in Tanaan and once in Arak - before we kill him in Highmaul.
Now of course, part of the issue is that there are a lot of Warlords to go through. By splitting them up, they naturally have to split some of their importance to the story. At the risk of addicting readers to TVTropes, this calls to mind the Conservation of Ninjutsu - which, to adapt the principle a little, essentially says that the more villains you focus on, the less each of them feels like an individual threat. The Iron Horde is easily divided and conquered, because it's not really a Horde. We've been able to pick of individual clans piecemeal.
The solution to all of this, I think, would be to focus on Hellscream. The other clan leaders can be important, but we've got to get a sense of what is going on with Grommash. If he's our main villain of the expansion, it's got to be clear that this is the Warchief. He's absolutely in charge and all the other clans are serving him.
Is it more realistic to see that he's delegated things to the other Warlords? Certainly. But for drama, there's just not enough hinting at his constant threat.
For Mists, whatever problems you might have with that expansion, the fight against Garrosh felt important and personal. And a huge part of that was that we got to interact with him a lot (particularly the Horde.) There was a sense that this was a huge reckoning - a part of a story that was bigger than just that expansion.
But let's rewind a bit and look at a different final boss. And if you know me and my personal preferences, it should be pretty obvious who I'm going to talk about:
The Lich King.
There was no boss I've ever been more excited to fight as Arthas Menethil. That guy had it freaking coming.
The Lich King of course had the benefit of being a central figure in Warcraft III, and his influence on the world could be felt through the histories of the Forsaken and the Blood Elves, and any player Death Knights. But of course, the leaders of the Old Horde have had an even bigger influence on literally every player character in the game.
The thing is, throughout the experience of Wrath of the Lich King, the Lich King was everywhere. He made personal appearances in Borean Tundra, Howling Fjord, Dragonblight, Zul'drak, and obviously Icecrown. He even crashed the second-to-last raid, sending us to fight Anub'arak (which was partially due to the fact that people thought it bizarre that such an important figure was merely the boss of a 5-player dungeon.)
And yes, people complained. A lot of people thought that his constant "You have done exactly as I hoped you would. Now I will leave you alive for no good reason" (except in Howling Fjord, where he kills the crap out of you if he catches you) made him seem less threatening. Granted, I think that at the end of his fight in ICC, his behavior becomes somewhat justified, but the larger point is that the story kept hammering home one major message: The Lich King is here. He is waiting for you. He is way more powerful than you are, and you are (to borrow a phrase from Illidan) not prepared to face him.
Things didn't work out so well with Deathwing. Mind you, we did see Deathwing plenty before we killed him in Dragon Soul - he would fly around and torch huge swaths of entire zones before 4.3 came out. The problem is that Deathwing didn't have much of a personality. His actions were less those of a crafty manipulator (which had been his old MO in previous appearances,) and so there wasn't really any interaction - just fleeing until we were ready to kill him.
Sometimes a story can be good when you barely see the villain and you don't know much about their inner thoughts - something like Alien is a good example. But we know Grommash Hellscream. There's no reason to keep him hidden away, especially because we never see him succeed at anything. He's not victorious enough to seem like an implacable monster. But if the narrative is supposed to be that the Iron Horde is one of Paper Tigers, then we need to witness the panic that sets in and watch as Grom is forced to do desperate... maybe demon-blood-drinky things in order to fight us.
Story is crucial to an RPG, and you can't have story without characters. Let us see our villain more, or we won't feel anything when we go to face him.
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