Hey, it suckered me into getting the expac!
1 Like
You didnât have Azshara in any capacity before Cataclsym in the first place! The entire night elven presence there amounted to two NPCs and a Flightmaster. You didnât even have a tent!
You didnât have Azshara in the first place. You drove the Horde out of Ashenvale. And your presence in Stonetalon at the end of questing was expanded from pre-Cata⌠The only ones who left Stonetalon was the disbanded Horde army. After you got your civilians out of Thalâdarah you proceeded to pound a Horde base and a Horde settlement into scrap.
Iâm certain lying to yourself to maintain the pretense at martyrdom doesnât make it any easier.
You mean the one whose loss was written into the backstory of WC3?
You mean like Varimathras?
The opposite is clearly the case in Arathi. Thereâs that lying to yourself thing again. Itâs also clearly an untrue claim for AV.
4 Likes
Wait, you mean the demonic Dreadlord was evil all along? Say it ainât so.
2 Likes
Uh. . . Aedren, Fandral has been evil since his introduction too. His being âvillain-battedâ was just him deciding to stop bothering to keep his villainy on the qt.
2 Likes
I know. It was a joke. I will say, it was a little unclear from your post what you meant. I took you as saying that Varimathrasâ betrayal was stupid and out of character. I would agree that both betrayals were rather predictable.
I was thinking more like Minato Namikaze and his shuriken knives that let him teleport places like Gokuâs instant transmission
The Zandalari lost half of itâs fleet while the KulâTirans still have their whole fleet⌠The Stormwind has lost 2 lesser fleets in this war(first while chasing after the prisoners and the second while invading Zuldazar) and only payed the Horde back by obliterating just 1 and a half!
We need to destroy another half a fleet before Blizzard should start sending Will Turner(more like Azshara) and the Flying Dutchman(more like whatever trap she has in store for us) after us!
1 Like
Honestly though, if fleets are this easy to destroy, then I feel like the primary goals of this expansion for both sides have been a huge waste of time. WoW should take a page out of the Sword of Truth series when it comes to powerful mages. When both sides have competent mages, then battles function as if neither side has one as they would continuously cancel each otherâs magic out.
I miss the old lore where mages of all colors needed to be protected by an infantry line to do their thing. Orgrim Doomhammer once threatened to crush Gulâdanâs skull with his bare hand. A threat that worked to keep the most powerful non-eredar warlock in the world in check.
Now mages are just straight up superheroes. They are better than their non-magical counterparts in every way.
7 Likes
This is totally fair. I know its a bit late replying but I kinda fell asleep at my desk. Guess it was a longer day at work than I realized.
I donât really see eye to eye with your approach enough to give you the answers you want. While I did make a whole post about how Iâm not too sympathetic, Iâm not one for so much invalidation either. I see where theyâre coming from and respect how they feel as valid. Its humiliating being the equivalent of the Alliance at the beginning of MoP. Which is almost exactly how the Horde is being played off (only also the aggressors) in 8.1. And while as an Alliance player its easy to register their wins as a black and white thing, because it just means we lose, it is totally fair that they donât like how Blizz has presented it.
I see their perspective and I recognize it as valid. Iâm pretty sure this is a key point where we differ. I just donât feel particularly bad for them.
Nah. Kisin is probably one of the most level headed and seemingly decent people on these forums. This isnât right.
6 Likes
Until they take a throwing axe to the back. The pendulum seems very confused now as it appears to be swinging in both directions simultaneously.
1 Like
No worries. I can understand why youâd come to the double standard conclusion otherwise. In truth when I see people start busting out straight insults I usually just skip whatever they are saying.
Thereâs also a few users Iâve learned to just skip the posts of entirely.
Eh, vulnerability to axes didnât stop Malfurion from soloing entire regiments and easily defeating the greatest warrior of the Horde in single combat.
Malfurion is one of my favorite characters and even I will admit heâs more than a little too powerful to be fighting⌠Basically any Horde hero. Even Sylvanas posing a threat stretches my suspension of disbelief even with whatever off-screen power-up she got.
3 Likes
QFT
I donât think this tendency is limited to WoW. Malazan Book of the Fallen started off really trying to highlight the symbiotic relationship between mages and the mundanes who protect them; both at the cadre level and up to the corps level. That eventually fell apart later in the series (after about three books) and individual mages or small groups of mages were able to wipe out entire armies. See also âA Wizard Did Itâ trope.
I hate to pull the âlazy writingâ card since I have great admiration for creative people, but I donât know what else to call it. Rather than take some time to think about how resources, tactics and strategy can contribute to a compelling story, we get OP magic users jerking the story in whatever direction (shiny object) that Bliz wants to go in that moment. Rather than glass canons, we get Jaina on a flying ship.
I was playing the new quests last night and the notion that I (the hero) was helping Jaina took more suspension of belief than I could manage. I would have preferred it if she had literally patted me on the head and said âWould you be a dear and fire those targeting harpoons at the Horde ships so I can blow them up?â And then at the end of the cutscene (showing my age here) I could look up at Jaina beaming âAnd I helped!â
Compare that to the silly scenario where we switch the scepters. As trivial as the gameplay was, at least I felt like I was contributing something and was on par with Shaw and Flynn.
Going back to the vain, bumbling wizards in the Discworld series has been a nice palate cleanser; and I say that as someone who really likes Jaina and thought the emotional part of her reunion with her mother was really well done.
2 Likes
I tend to blame it on a general sense of power creep and the shift in genre. The story itself is evolving more and more toward fighting massive, cosmic threats and the heroes are being shaped to match that.
The RTS games were about strategy and war. The heroes, while powerful, couldnât solo armies. They needed those armies because otherwise there would be no game and the lore was written to justify the need for armies.
Now Warcraft is no longer about war. War is a thing that happens but the real story is about the characters fighting each other with soldiers in the backdrop. The soldiers donât matter anymore, no matter what Blizzardâs story says, because they donât matter to the gameplay. Only the PC and the big name heroes matter as far as raid content is concerned.
The power of the threats has also been steadily climbing, and while it is easy to explain how a mage might be a threat to an Old God it is a lot harder to justify, say, Varian or Garrosh being a threat to a titan. It is also easier to sneakily increase the power of magic users because there is no clear limit to how strong a mage can be in our real world like there is with warriors. While certainly Warcraft warriors are superhuman there is only so much weâre willing to suspend our disbelief when it comes to their capabilities where as we have no limit with magic. Warcraft magic has no real rules and therefore no discernible limits.
So the writers are just writing their casters as being more powerful. Both to deal with these new threats and to increase the spectacle of these heroes clashing to make raids more interesting. In doing so however they are harming the RPG aspect of the game. It is a lot harder to justify a warrior, mage, and rogue working together in a way that the mage doesnât just do everything better than his peers now. The mage doesnât need protection from the warrior and can probably do stealth better than the rogue with invisibility spells. All while being able to tear down city fortifications, teleport across continents, and even manipulate time itself.
Casters donât need a party anymore. Jaina doesnât need Genn or Anduin to hold off the Horde while she conjures a spell. Malfurion doesnât need Tyrande to distract their enemies while he calls upon an army of wisps. Casters are just superheroes that can do it all on their own.
7 Likes
Nah, Derek will probably be lightforged by Calia, instantly unraveling Sylvanasâs plan and be the first of a new alliance allied race.
1 Like
In Elder Scrolls Oblivion, playing a mage correctly meant you could do everything a warrior or rogue could do, and could do it better. Skyrim then nerfed magic to oblivion, forcing players to get creative to be effective wizards. WoW could use a bit of that nerfing (lorewise only), although how would they justify it is another matter entirely.
Kisin-
I donât mean to argue with you, but I see âpower creepâ as a symptom of lazy writing syndrome.
MoP actually did a good job of dialing back the OMG threat level, but then the story returned to form.
I have lurked here for ages, so I donât mean to unload all my issues with the overall story in this narrow thread. OP mages are just the tip of the iceberg for me.
My memories of playing an unmodded skyrim as a mage are a collage of endlessly backpedalling whilst spamming the same spell over and over again. Mods completely saved that game for me.
1 Like
The destruction magic tree was completely useless outside of stunlocking dragons with focused magic kamehamehas and then spending ten minutes to kill said stunlocked dragon, because someone thought that destruction spells should not scale up in power with the rest of the game.
1 Like
1 Like