I really don’t see why Blizzard felt the need to emphasize that this was always envisioned as a three act saga so it makes sense to end here.
The expansion is unpopular. We need to shut it down and hurry along. Everyone knows. Just say it.
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They don’t want to admit that they might have made a few miss steps along the narrative path, so to speak.
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The quest writers dont write the main story and have to work with what they got (right?).
So sounds like any other job. Out of touch leadership (Danuser?) makes out of touch decisions and the workers have to eat sh!t and smile threw it.
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I need to say I’m just… tired. Tired of how the lore has gone and trying to explain and connect stuff that shouldn’t. The Shadowlands shouldn’t be the endgame for majority of what happened to our world. Whatever happened to simply nefarious people?
I hate how the story diverted towards the afterlife with little to no precursor to it in BFA. I hate Shadowlands and how it made things prior to it irrelevant or worthless. Our understanding of the afterlife was better than… this.
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Yeah…
I’m just gunna… not. But if others wanna. I say do it. Knock yourself out, go nuts. I’ll just be over here.
…waiting.
Thing is… there COULD have been precursor for an afterlife expansion in BFA:
Talanji made a deal with the literal Loa of Death, didn’t she? That could have served as great foreshadowing for an expansion where we follow her to the afterlife of the ancestor-worshipping races to save Rastakhan, Vol’jin, and others in a way that built on the already-established lore concerning the afterlife and magic that pulls upon it.
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Can you believe Bwomsomdi is the only actual God and after life that was correct this whole time.
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Yeah, incorporating the existing afterlife lore would have made so much sense. Use it to bring in the new/SL afterlife lore, even. I’d like to have seen:
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The zones we go to in the SL are pillars of the afterlives, waypoints to serve as: purgatory (Revendreth), rebirth of loa/cosmic beings (Ardenweald), service (Bastion), security (Maldraxxus).
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As for actual afterlives, we go to slices of them in scenarios, dungeons and encounters similar to Argus. There also might be several that we go to for campaigns in a major patch (9.2 if this was a solid, well-recieved 3-patch expac).
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There’s no Oribos, it’s more of a seat of power for the custodians of those pillars. Vast emptiness with massive statues floating in the distance. Dalaran is teleported to this in-between place. Make it work somehow, but it’s a city we all love and are familiar with. OR, design the city to be MUCH better than Oribos, which is terrible.
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The brokers are lame, figure something else out.
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Do something a bit different with the Maw/Torghast. The Maw is ‘hell’, after all. Less questing/grinding in the Maw, more a melding of these 2 ideas and incorporating proc gen.
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Korthia being pulled to hell by magic chains can stay, I guess, it being a sort of set piece/plot device to get to this Sepulcher place. Probably not worthy of being major patch content.
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This new zone should just look insane, it’s way too normal. Floating trees, orbs and ‘the ground is water!’ doesn’t cut it.
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The Maw, and this new zone where realities are made should make heavy use of proc gen; most of it should be different each time you zone in. This new zone should be the ‘heaven’ to the Maw’s ‘hell’. Both should be disorienting, mystifying, epic, terrifying, etc.
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If you can’t do actual proc gen in this game to make this work don’t make an expansion about the afterlife that explains how the universe was made.
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That would be like if we die in the real world and it turns out the Aztecs were the true religion and we really do need blood sacrifices.
People are passionate about what they are passionate about, and that results in the passionate turning the mole hills into mountains.
What you honestly have to worry about is when those complaints die off.
Yes, it gets a lot quieter. A more friendly space. But when people stop airing grievances, even the minor stuff…that means the passion has gone out. And if there is no passion, then it’s only a matter of time.
I think with WoW, there’s been a sense that the complainers have gotten louder, especially post-MoP when - if you’ll pardon the hyperbolic and rather dramatic language - the complains have started to echo around a ever-dwindling hall. Because for every one person being “negative” about the game…you have folks like me, where the passion has dwindled and they’ve directed their attentions and passions elsewhere.
As manager for a major global retail chain that has undergone numerous restructuring and internal initiatives…column A mixed with column B. A lot of time it’s corporate bullspit you have to pretend to be jazzed for because even if you know it’s bullspit, it’s still your job to sell the bullspit. But as part of the processing of selling it to others, you kind of have to delude yourself into believing the hype if only to sell it effectively. Also there’s that vain hope that if we just believe hard enough it actually will be as good as the guys upstairs are saying it’s going to be.
As a long time advocate of High Elves - I agree with this. Void Elves are basically High Elves in all but name. Really Void Elves were just a really stupid and twisty way of getting to High Elves for the Alliance, but kind of hilarious when you consider when Blood Elves were introduced the “true Horde” fans hated the fact a “pretty” race was in the Horde. Then suddenly it was all about “Blood Elves are a proven part of the Horde!”
Eh. Regardless, we got there in the end. The only problem is we came on the back of a reputation grind that by all rights ought to have resulted in playable Broken.
That’s a non-bet. When’s the last time a Horde leader was ever held accountable for their actions? Hell, even Garrosh got to go out like a badass twice-over.
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I shall say the biggest issue with Void Elves isn’t that they’re stupid.
They have the potential to be amazing lore wise and add things that you would have no prayer at getting since high elves would functionally be discount Sindorei/Rendorei.
The issue was the lazy use of them since they were popped out, teased to be doing frankly shady things, got to do like, 4 shady things, but then were told to sit in a corner and look like a decoration for the humans.
Personally, I hope if we get a antagonistic light expansion, we get to see void elves flex in a manner that makes them awesome to see in action. I personally dislike Void Elves, but if I were to have -someone- find a way to break the lightbinding thing, it would probably be a Velf (at least for Alliance)
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We still don’t even know what supposed past event caused the Arbitorbot to 404 and kick off this whole mess.
I personally hope we don’t learn so we can escape this that much faster.
Just let Sylvanas yell the Shadowlands are free so we can be done.
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We all hit our heads. BfA was largely a fever dream and SL was the height of it.
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I specifically did not bother to skim any of the details for a while so I’m a bit late to catch the outrage wave, but I finally saw a bit of the preview and bro. Literally what.
The repeated use of key phrases like “alien” not only irritated the ship out of me on a basic level (you dont have to run down the thesaurus but I got the mission statement the first four times) but the delivery on this apparent singular key word was… Middling, at best.
Disregarding what they showed off itself, is Blizzard aware of their own content? We did alien over a full decade ago. Burning Crusade happened. Legion happened. We have literal aliens. We have floating rocks. We’ve done the ‘progenitor’ thing.
Where was all this “alien” when we literally fought demons through their own portals onto random, distant worlds? And what’s all this literal misinformation about a place that “couldn’t exist by the laws of the world as we know it” or whatever? It’s a fantasy game! About magic! There are no f------ rules!
Like the most brutally honest and scathing thing I can say is that I was excited for these exact keywords and content updates… over a literal decade ago. We had progressively unlocked content, we’ve raided unreal fantasy landscapes, ETHEREALS ALREADY HAPPENED BLIZZARD.
And that’s without me getting even more snide about the art direction. Anyone ever looked at some of the landscapes across the many MtG series? Have you seen some of the absurd monsters in a final fantasy game? Am I not supposed to immediately notice and groan at how recognizable every single skeleton and animation set is?
So yeah, add my unnecessary additional whinge to the pile. The eight ish minutes of video I put up with smacked of a desparate attempt to grossly oversell a painfully mediocre to downright uninspired holdover to the next cash grab.
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when i think alien in WoW, i think of the latter half of Return to Karazhan. it gets super weird and trippy and really nailed the vibe of unchecked magical shenanigans
and then danuser hits us with floating rocks being the most alien thing in the world. like there’s such confidence in his voice. it feels like an onion video but it’s not and that’s horrifying
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ah yes, the utterly alien aesthetic of [checks notes],
… geometry and… uhh… floating rocks! that leak!
pay no mind to all the titan garbage we’ve been waving around for expansions now, this is different!
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The subreddit memes have me laughing.
This is a good call out at the whole “alien” world and whatever lol
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Blizzard continues to be Blizzard. “Players keep asking as to get rid of the faction divide… how should we respond?”
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“Yeah, that doesn’t look right”
- Blood Elves
- Nightborne
- Void Elves
- Pandaren
“B-b-but those aren’t-” There is no more or less argument you could possibly make that I didn’t literally just reduce to it’s most basic contention with those examples, shut up.
I’m always angry but that tweet is especially rank with the sort of ignorant pride masquerading as glib comedy.
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