And I would add that the inclusion of the monk class is just as inevitable as the arrival of DK. It is just right there, and a pandaren expansion is something most people want to see. I would bet we will see it within the next couple of years, if the game hasn’t died by then. Personally, I would love it. Anything that keeps the ball rolling and keeps things fresh.
Going back to DK, I do think some of the arguments about the runes system make sense, but I think this could actually prove to be detrimental to DK’s health in the longer run. Either each rune’s flavor will start to dilute away as they try to come up with new stuff, or each rune’s gameplay remains largely the same forever and everyone just gets bored of it. For now, the biggest issue is powerlevel and not losing anything at rotation, but that’s just a contextual issue more than a design issue imo. They can fix that with the nerf hammer as they always have.
It might end up like DH’s Outcast which was a big deal on release and was barely touched on between Ashes of Outland and the handful of cards they got in MotLK. Now they’re getting some dedicated support for the keyword.
Maybe Blizzard just kinda “forgets” about rune requirements for 90% of new DK cards in the future.
You might be right, but I dunno why. Of course, it’s not nearly as atrocious as some Mary Sue ‘Tamsin Roame’ nonsense or such, but still a bit overrated, if you ask me.
I don’t play either, but from what I heard back in the day, the whole WoW was about resurrecting or ‘time-travelling’ yet another big guy for the umpteenth time, so that nonames can farm him again, and punching out yet another, even bigger Cthulhu bad guy by the same nonames with each subsequent addon, so I dunno how a single expansion might be different. On the other hand, I just might not know something, and that’s it.
Brode would have done well to stop himself first… On the other hand, what came next was apparently even worse than his particular… vision, inspired by who knows what mushrooms.
Since the withdrawal of Bli$$ard from China, perhaps… Wasn’t the whole Pandaria thing a huge love letter to East Asia, which was also very important for their business — or something like that?
I’ll never forget how taken aback I was how stereotypical Mists of Pandaria was of Chinese. I was also surprised before that about trolls being Jamaican, dwarves being Scottish (right?), etc. I was surprised more people weren’t calling these racist caricatures. I’m not saying it’s necessarily racist, but at the time I found it very damn strange lol.
I am not chinese, so I can’t speak in their stead, but I don’t think MoP was racist or offensive to a chinese audience. I do think it was a bit of a trope-ey and stereotypical take on imperial medieval chinese themes; but I think the chinese audience still appreciated the references.
Take the latest Pokemon game, for instance. In case you are not a Pokemon ”fan” like me, the game takes place on an imaginary region based on Spain. As a spaniard, I found most of the references to my culture hilarious and kinda silly; but I still hugely enjoyed the game and was so happy they would base this game on my home country, however foreign and silly the references were. I had a really great time with it. I think a chinese person probably felt something similar with MoP. Again, I am not sure tho, I am not chinese.
PS Come to think of it, a name like Nguen sounds actualy very Vietnamese to me, for instance, while Cho is Korean to my ear.
And hadn’t they toyed with the old Horde before that (speaking of time-travelling and such), although the desire to return to that old ‘epic’ lore is somewhat understandable?
Speaking of which, I forgot one more thing about WoW in general (so I suppose this might be the spot to add it, while at it): there’s also been so-called retconning of established lore to the point where you’d lose track of what is considered ‘canon’ nowadays — all of it to suit whatever sloppiness they’re trying to sell.
Like what?
Yes, there are a lot of references or inspirations drawn from real-world cultures. Dwarves having a Scottish accent, when expressed in English, is a common stereotype in fantasy for some reason, by the way.
Maybe because they weren’t? I’ve heard that all those Pandas were received affectionately by the community like the love letter that they were.
Some others have been quite strange, though… to the point that, with accents lost in translation, those of the ‘original’ culture wouldn’t even get the reference at all.
Yeah, go on, tell this forum how “Forsaken ‘Lives’ Matter” in WoW or start yet another rubbish topic of yours.
In X amount of years, everything like this will be considered racist and insensitive. It’s inevitable.
We live in a world where people forced change the name of a football team and the majority of people who it was supposedly racist against didn’t want it changed.
Never underestimate the power of the false White Knighting in America.
That ‘White’ is probably ‘racist’, too, just like ‘blacklists’ in programming code.
Speaking of America: which one did you mean, the North or the South one? Luckily, none of these is the whole world, by the way.
And, while we’re at it…
And who made these games, by the way? I’m not familiar at all, a quick search told me it’s a Japanese studio, but who are the actual designers? Maybe there is a case of being culturally oblivious and thus falling to blunt stereotypes, which is not that uncommon.
I know they’re just joking, but there are parts of that in there where it will be reality in the future.
I think people 200 years from now will look at us as if we’re cavemen (cave people, sorry) because a majority of us intake food that came from a living source. It will be seen as barbaric for us to even consider eating meat. Sort of like how we look back and we see our ancestors as barbaric for owning slaves, and how people being purchased like property was just a normal part of society.
And then their future will look at them as being barbaric for eating plants as the future learns plants have emotions and feelings and feel pain.
It’s inevitable. All futures will view all pasts as being primitive and uneducated.
Ah, then glad I didn’t say they were. What surprised me is akin to Schyla’s comment, in that I was surprised more people (wrong or not) pointed out and or were upset by these races being derived from actual cultures and people. It feels kind of lazy, to me, at best. I did play the game, though, so obviously I wasn’t bothered too much by it.
@Schyla, I think you’re being a little pessimistic lol. I don’t find society making change in that direction. I find bigotry quite alive and well, as though we’re stepping backward, and not forward (in the way you describe (clearly (I think) not positive progress)).
As for the Redskins football team, I can’t say I’m entirely shocked people decided (and after so long of it being named Redskins) that we may not want to name a football team after the idea of Native Americans having a reddish skin complexion (that was the reference, right?). I don’t think that’s too outrageous, really.
By saying that your notion was obsolete, I meant that what you have described as possible future, seems to have already happened and be more like recent past.
History teaches us that humanity is rather short-sighted, and a lot of futurological prognoses have been a big miss, so I’d be careful with it.
Besides, even if you look at the present moment, where we all actually live, the notion of what’s ‘progressive’ is not as cut-and-dried as some self-proclaimed ‘progressivists’ would like it to appear.
Do we? An ancient Roman handbook on how to handle slaves is still a bestseller for managers and such, I hear.
And what has changed? Sure, technologies have, as have exterior features, but if you look at capitalism, in this regard, isn’t it another form of slavery?
If you consider something called the reverse Flynn effect and the decline of education quality in particular, then a near future might look at the recent past thusly only due to its own ignorance and hubris.
Take a look at that:
