So outside of a few graphical updates, BGs seem to be a thing where they’re made and more or less abandoned unless it’s to test out some new brawl. Gameplay-wise I love them but the settings don’t really make a lot of sense anymore.
Now it seems with some of them the factions who are there are somewhat independent of their parent factions (i.e. Stormpikes, Frostwolves, Defilers, Warsong Outriders, etc). But at this point in the setting the BGs narratively don’t really make any sense. I get that sometimes when you’re playing a game that’s this old, there’s some suspension of disbelief or just accepting something as OOC or whatever, but PVP is still in the game and it’s not just relegated to Arenas.
So stuff like Arathi Basin and Gilneas for example–I’d be fine if you kept the meshes for everything but changed the textures and said it’s somewhere else with different NPCs, because iirc Arathi Highlands was reclaimed by the Alliance (which…with how much of a phasing nightmare the game has become isn’t quite represented in-game) and Gilneas was recently reclaimed WITH THE HELP OF THE FORSAKEN by the Alliance also.
Please Blizzard if you have an intern that knows how to use ChatGPT just have them write up some kind of reason why these BGs still exist from a narrative standpoint. Doesn’t have to be great, hell it barely has to make sense.
Some of them are actually long done. We know from the warlock questline in Legion that Tol Barad for example is no longer an active battleground.
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Yeah a lot of battlegrounds are basically, “only lore relevant to the expansion they came out in” at best.
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They do not still exist. Lore-wise they are long done- for the most part they are locked in time. Like how the warfronts are locked in BfA, they are not consistantly happening over the span of all these expansions.
They have confirmed a new battleground in the War Within. It is important to note that the factions are still only under an armistice; not permanent truce as far as we know. There are still going to be small skirmishes, like the one where the new battleground will be- for mineral resources.
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Battlegrounds should not be canon.
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we need more LORE in bgs
night elves vs blood elves and tauren with sunwell/moonwell powerups and shiz. instead of random orbs and flags
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It’s actually why it’s always been hard for me to pvp. The setting either doesn’t make sense anymore or your self RP is locked into an endless time loop of vanilla objectives.
I pvp’d very heavily in Cata, MoP & BFA because it made sense. Every other expansion it was cringe. I unlocked the 1800 elite armour set in SL doing RBG’s and man that made the logical part of my brain hurt.
Same with visiting the AH or stepping into literally any zone outside of SL. Because at the time we were supposed to be confined to that realm for 2 years.
Anyway I digress but I definitely see your points.
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No we weren’t. We even had npc’s come into the Shadowlands alive and well during the expansion. Such as Taelia for example. Hell you casually go back into the Shadowlands during the Blood Elf Heritage armor questline alongside someone who isn’t the fabled “maw walker”. Once we escaped the Maw and made our way to Oribos, we were no longer “trapped” in the shadowlands. As the Ebon Blade used us as an anchor to create the portals to Stormwind and Orgrimmar.
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Let’s not get too bogged down in why Shadowlands had some narrative issues to put it generously lol.
I’m just saying they should address it in some kind of context. It’s easy to side-step the static nature of MMO’s in some cases like old dungeons because you’re generally experiencing them as you level in the appropriate range. But BGs, that’s top level stuff, and a good chunk of the player base really enjoys PvP outside of arenas and it just feels like it’s been completely neglected.
And I do get what Darknessbull is saying, that in the context of some expansions it “feels” better than in others; BfA for example, BGs felt like an extension of the xpac, like something you were supposed to be doing, whereas in Shadowlands or DF you’re just kind of stuck suspending disbelief.
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For the most part yeah, but some dungeons from vanilla make no sense when Cata came out, due to the classic world revamp. Like Blackrock Depths. Lets go and kill Moira’s already dead husband.
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For ashenvale it was resources cuz Thrall was stupid enough to settle the Orcs in a barren wasteland. Arathi was for strategic Lordaeron control. And Alterac was dwarf imperialism.
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I feel like I’m beating a dead horse here. Durotar was actually quite rich in natural resources until Daelin and his forces went to great lengths to remove as much of that as possible. As seen in the side quest where Rexxer and co. investigate recorded signs of Thunder Lizards in Thunder Ridge becoming increasingly hostile. Turns out that was due to the Kul Tiran forces chopping away at every tree they could find.
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Pre Cataclysm they said Durotar reminded Thrall of Draenor. After that it was penace and suffering for the actions of the old Horde.
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That’s a Golden retcon that doesn’t match with the previous explanation.
It is not a “retcon” by any strech. At worse it was building up what was Horde lore at the time, that the Barrens did look like the orcish homeworld and the penance part seem pretty logical for Thrall, especially considering yes, his people did not to cleanse themselves of their actions from Warcraft 2-3.
How does a forested Durotar look like Draenor?
Terokkar Forest?
Look, BC must less WoD was but a distant idea at that point so one would assume they decided to describe it because at that point the Barrens sort of looked like the playable title sets from BTDP and it was somewhat of a rugged looking place.
To the main point, I think most static, or evergreen if we’re being generous, lore for BGs is fine. If we look at all the instanced BGs:
- There will always be skirmishes on the Ashenvale border.
- The Alliance might have won Arathi but they didn’t kick out Hammerfall and the Defilers working out of there.
- Alterac Valley is well settled between the two factions.
- Eye of the Storm is so far out there who cares.
- Isle of Conquest is also so far out there who really cares
- Strand of the Ancients is no longer available
- Twin Peaks surely still have Dragonmaw and Wildhammer going at it
- Gilneas is one of the few who actually had substantial lore updates but there will always be some hardline Worgen and Forsaken going at it.
- Temple of Kotmogu and Deepwind Gorge can easily still have Horde and Alliance partisans going at it in Pandaria
- Silvershard Mines are technically in Stranglethorn, and are mines. Easy enough to see Horde and Alliance fighting over natural resources, especially in an important place like Stronglethorn.
- Seething Shore is really the only lore locked BG. What Azerite is still popping up? Why is Nathanos still giving me orders? Best way to look at this is just odd shoreline skirmishes.
Overall, I think the majority still make sense and act as good representatives of what perpetually happens in the open world. Now the open world BGs are a bit of a different story. Wintergrasp, Tol Barad, Ashran, are all kinda locked in their expansions narratively. Surely we’re still not fighting over VoA, especially on the siege scale WG was. TB, as mentioned, is no longer actively being fought over. Ashran isn’t even accessible from Azeroth. Im surprised they didn’t make a 40 man BG out of Tol Barad, though I suppose the interest isn’t there too much for it. The most fun I ever had was the fighting outside of the PvP zone before, during, after, and in between matches.
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Fire that intern and use someone who can just write.
and who would that be at Blizzard presently?