Wait and see can and does work as a fine story mechanic, the problem is, its been the only trick in the back blizzard has used and we have reached the point, well before SL, where wait and see has turned into we just dont give a crap any more.
Blizzard basically stung us along for to long and we lost interest anymore. You can only go “AH HAH! BUT LOOK HERE !!! what an elaborate ruse we did!” be fore we are already checked out.
Danuser is a proponent of a mystery-box style storytelling, got on board at the time. When there was a lot of old narrative to fall back onto, that did not look to bad. Now we have “from the ground up” expansion, so when the old lore discarded, we can see how this narrative style stands on it’s own.
Why people support him? Well, he does seem like a nice guy, as a person, so I would not be surprised if just a personality that treats other people better than Afrasiabi could be enough to net him a lot of support from the team.
Sadly, a good person is not a profession. Maybe he would be good if focused on internal communication in the team, but as someone who can influence the narrative, he, alongside other nice people, like Golden, Gregory, Copeland, arguably Feasel and Ion if they can affect this area, and likely others - they are nice people but darn they are awful to handle pre-established IP with existing audience.
(no wolder every project Danuser worked on failed):
gl hf
That does make sense maybe he was very good at writing for an episodic show that every week there is a new episode to answer our questions and give us new ones for next week.
But when you have months between story content how can anyone think this strategy is a good one?
Ground breaking.
Honestly I hope the shoes keep dropping on Blizzard. I want them to keep getting hit left and right until entire teams and team leaders get canned.
Blizzard needs a purge, a clean slate and so they can review what made them work in the first place and capture that lightning in the bottle.
Because as far as I am concerned the only people worth keeping are the visual artists and the music people.
From a storytelling perspective, yes, that could be a good story, though I don’t trust Blizzard to write it.
From my perspective, as a player heavily invested in the night elves and who adores Tyrande for too many reasons to go into here, and with which you’d just disagree if you’re someone who dislikes Tyrande (not saying you are, idk) and which can be argued either way, it would be terrible. Game-breakingly terrible.
Of course they’ve already broken the game for me, but eh. That’s my answer: I would hate it, reject it, and bail on the game (if I hadn’t already and weren’t just killing time here 'til my sub runs out).
The thing is, Warcraft needs a hard reset for a story to work at this point. Either a reboot or a time skip sequel. Just about all the main threats have been defeated and the mysteries solved.
There isn’t much left to do but go into the unknown. Stories aren’t supposed to be heroes killing the next big bad forever. Eventually you run out or things just get too ridiculous.
The problem with WoW is the majority of the playbase are just into non-story elements(transmogs, pets, mounts, old raids, achievements). They really don’t want to move on. So the franchise is hamstrung.
Players and major characters currently in shadowlands stop the jailor but he resets reality.
We get sent back to vanilla timeline along with the few characters that came with us.
Tyrande, Jaina, Andiun, Sylvanas, Thrall and Baine. Thats pretty much the surviving cast of WC3 isn’t it? So our characters don’t get the reset and neither do these pivotal characters but all the dead characters like Voljin and Cairne are back.
Welcome to WoW A Realm Reborn.
lol what? Elune is one of the only entities left in WoW that still remains a mystery. She is a godlike figure with godlike powers. She is also the only entity we know about that has never been observed in her physical form.
The Night Elves worship her as a deity (a God). They call her the Moon Goddess but she’s also worshipped on other planets, meaning she isn’t just a Night Elf Goddess. Xal’atath even calls her an “upstart Goddess”. Elune has connections to the Eternal Ones who have been around since before the Titans. She also has connections to the Titans as one of the pillars of creation is named after Elune.
What do you mean you don’t know why people think she’s omnipotent? Elune has performed omnipotent feats before. Her “powers” seem unlimited.
Khadgar believes Elune may have actually created the first Naaru.
Elune pacified Saurfang and prevented his axe from chopping off Malfurion’s head.
Elune shrouded Darkshore in an eclipse to empower the Night Elves and the Worgen against the invading Horde forces.
Elune empowered Tyrande with the Night Warrior aka “wrath of Elune” powers, and Tyrande was able to drive the Horde back from Dark Shore as a result. This is evident that there is another non-passive side to Elune.
Elune cleansed Sargeras’ corruption from Avrus Illwhisper and restored him to back to a Night Elf from a satyr.
She shielded Tyrande in Azshara’s palace preventing her from being tortured. The Highborne then tried to starve her but Elune again intervened making Tyrande basically immortal temporarily.
Elune dragged Ysera’s soul to Ardenweald though I think it was said Ysera was the last soul to appear before the Arbiter. We do know that Elune can drag souls to certain realms, namely Ardenweald, which she tried to do with the Night Elves.
Could she not have pacified Sylvanas like she did to Saurfang? She could have pacified the entire battlefield which she has done before. She didn’t do it because she needed those souls to fuel Ardenweald.
What does this really accomplish if you bring everyone back at their current power levels? Are the godkillers going to fight gnolls and an Ogre warlord again? Or fight Ragnaros for the 3rd time?
Your character won’t be fighting gnolls as end game content but new interpretations of the old gods and elemental lords we defeated before.
No they have to kill those gods again and without their azerite or whatever crazy weapon they looted and sacrificed in the expansions before.
Yes.
Or do you prefer to keep going down this cosmic BS where enemies keep becoming bigger and bigger gods?
Because eventually this is the end game if we follow this trend:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/29/3c/8d/293c8d3d5edf3a7366ae52e59640b253.gif
Arguably time skip would not be able to fix narrative inconsistencies, so that seems like an inferior option to me.
Do they need to stay alive further though?
gl hf
I honestly can’t imagine the franchise without them and I have a lot of hold over attachement to them since WC3. I just don’t like that they have become Danuser or whoever’s marvel super hero action figures that they bang together to push their crappy narrative forward
I want them there but I don’t want them too involved.
I can see you point.
To me though, if the team can’t create new compelling characters of all flavours and has to rely on the old guard, the story is doomed anyway.
gl hf
This is my belief, the current writing team does great at small isolated self contained stories. Look at places like drustvar, the zone stories created in the old world, they feel great, they are great, everything they do were they try to tie the cosmos together sucks.
Why does it have to be one or the other? I would much rather have the Warcraft setting move forward with things still brought back to low power levels. Which means it would be time to move pass the WC3 heroes.
Yes, WC3 was my introduction into the franchise and I really am nostalgic of it, but you’d be doing the story a huge disservice by just recycling the same plot and villains again, hoping it would be ‘better’ this time.
Anduin wasn’t in warcraft 3. And thank the heavens for that.
Atleast he cant ruin my wc3 experience.
Dude I know and neither was Baine but the rest were in WC3 and if there is a timeline retcon then the ones that died like Voljin or Cairne will be back
Are you sure we did not have to rescue Baine from centaurs in W3?
Can’t remember tbh
gl hf
why wouldnt she choose renewal? she knows for a fact if she choose Vengeance she would have the power stripped from her 5 seconds before achieving her goal
I honestly don’t remember him being in WC3… was he!? Idk!
Well said. And I think more than anything else this approach to storytelling has just pulverized my interest in this setting for the foreseeable future.
I personally do not believe this mystery box approach is a good way to tell stories. However I do think it works reasonably well for television shows. We can wax poetic about the beauty and tradition of story telling but ultimately these are commercial products that have one solitary goal - to keep as many eyeballs as humanly possible fixed on the product for as long as possible.
Now the best way to achieve this, and indeed the best way to achieve success with any enterprise, is to create a well made product.
But that’s actually quite hard. So in lieu of that you can keep an audience strung along with mysteries you may not actually have any answers to. I wouldn’t call that good but it is effective so I see why it’s done.
But with a TV series the audience just has to wait for the next episode. Which is either immediately viewable or coming in a week.
This doesn’t work for WoW - because we had to wait about 3 years to see what the significance of Teldrassil was. And it turned out it was all because Elune has shockingly poor communication skills.
What a story for the ages. The mysteries of the goddess of the moon has the same intrigue as trying to figure out why your cousin seems cross with you at Thanksgiving. Did Elune get drunk and say some very unkind words about their father’s opinion of a candidate on Deitybook?
Can’t wait to see Sylvanas’s reasoning for trusting the Jailor come February. Seeing as the guy mumbles everything I figure she literally misunderstood what his goals were.