So i take it we all agree that BfA is a load of crap by now right? A lot of BfA’s issues were also in older expansions, but not normally to this extreme.
They rely to much on the idea of a single character being the hero by the end of the expansion, we had Tirion in Wrath, thrall in Cataclysm, Varian was supposed to be this in Mist but then had his story get removed do to negative feedback, in warlords it was Khadgar, Legion it Was Illidan, and now, in BfA it is Jaina. For the most part the difference was the other characters tended to be only in the later parts of the expansion, while Jaina is all over the place and seems to be defining the morality of the expansion (Teldrassil is portrayed as being less evil then what happened to her brother for example).
They can’t create new villains, and can’t make the villains seem truly threatening, the one exception being Mist (Garrosh was a wasted character, but he was a threatening villain, as was the Thunder King, who was created in a single patch). Illidan, Zul’jin, Vashj, Kael’thas were all wasted on this, while Deathwing, the Legion, the Iron Horde, and the Lich King all felt underwhelming. Gul’dan was threatening, as where most vanilla villains, but for the most part, wow has had weak villains who were created decades earlier. BfA has it’s main villains be G’huun Sylvanas, N’zoth, and Azshara, and out of those 3, Sylvanas is an idiotic teenager, Azshara has done almost nothing, and N’zoth and G’huun are so boring i can’t even think straight.
Finally we have the issue of the idea a large evil faction is responsible for most things. Generally the Legion and the Old Gods. Legion were the bigger bads in Burning Crusade, Warlords, and well, Legion, while the Old Gods were the bigger bads in Cataclysm, the end of Vanilla, Chronicles, and now BfA (In mist the Sha were more a threat, but a local one with the main villain using them as tools)
BFA has good writing though. Anduin is really well written, Jainas story line in KT was very good as well, the drust were a pretty good read while questing. Shaw and Taelia had some really exciting moments questing. Seems you just don’t like the story over all direction of sylvanas and just say the whole story is bad and ignore all the small details and short stories that make BFA great.
Catapults burning a magic world tree, blessed by 2 aspects that is really, really far, just for cheap drama they wrote themselves into a corner, also its not like we were informed that the catapults have tree killer fire or that they were blessed by the wind or something so they could reach teldrassil, you know, make it believable that they can actually set the tree on fire by some forbidden magic or something, hell if youre going the civilian killing route why not go evil sociopath all the way.
Idiotball alliance retreating from dazar alor because the trolls are mourning, really, of all the excuses they had to use this one, like i dont give a damn about my own people that died to make this possible.
Horde not acknowledging that their leader doesnt care about them IMMEDIATLY
after BoL, instead she had to rez a dead guy against his will in front of everyone TO FORCE baine and his imprisonment so they start thinking “Gee, maybe its not such a good idea to have sylvanas warchief”
I also find of poor taste that sylvanas is making a fool of everyone like she is given meta knowledge about the happenings of the narrative without any justification… how every character is going to perfectly react, this is only my opinion but we havent been introduced some sort of horde SI 7 to get information on the alliance, nathanos is not enough i mean an organization, please something that justifices this, this point is mostly a gripe of mine i would like her plans… to look more like plans i dont know if on the horde side of things you get more info about this…
I agree there is some good writing but only on the small stuff, the bigger scope narrative is really bad, its like trying to find a coin on a turd, a very big stinky turd.
The Alliance war campaign was also pretty good writing also had some funny comedy stuff. Never thought blizz could make me feel bad for a race of gorrilas genocided by the horde.
I wonder why the Horde was so confident their catapults could even reach Teldrassil. It’s not like the kaldorei permitted them to drag a few to Darkshore to test it out with dummy ammo (not on fire).
It’s amazing how BAD the story is. Like they don’t even know what are they doing. It’s even worse considering we already played this and left no one happy.
I admit it has its good moments but for the most part I’m embarrased.
BFA is so bad that it hits pretty much all the tropes in fantasy writing. At least on the Horde side - I never experienced the Alliance.
Out of touch King doesn’t realize the threat to his Kingdom? Checked.
A corrupt general aiding the enemy? Checked.
Daughter/Son steps in and saves the Kingdom? Checked.
I could go on, but I think you guys get the point .The story is just straight generic blend standard fantasy writing.
I’d say as much an analysis of what happens when writers are tone def to their audience. It shouldn’t have taken a genius to realize the Alliance launching a preemptive strike on Undercity to prevent Slyvanas from building the Azerite Warmachine and have Teldrassil being an accident where Alliance shares partial responsibility would have been the way to start this expansion.
Zul struck me as a particularly amazing waste of a character. He even mentions in questing that the mark of a truly good prophet is to know the limits of prophecy and thus prepare for the things even he can’t forsee. Somehow, he doesn’t apply this to the champion of the Horde (who, among other things, foiled his efforts in Cata and MoP) and promptly dies at the end of a quest. He then dies again in a raid.
Here’s an amazing character who’s been built up for two expansions now. Let’s have him be serving an old god the entire time, and forget his own abilities at a critical moment.
I was okay with it in 8.0 and 8.1 but her also being the lead character of 8.2 is too much, even more in the raid against Azshara where it should really have been Tyrande first.
Preach. Zul and Ratakhan’s treatments were the worst things in this already awful expansion. Zul could have been the face villain of an expansion on the level of Gul’dan very easily, instead he was a generic cultist who died in the first patch.
Yeah, a few times now Blizz has introduced AMAZING Horde characters, who shine above the usual trash…and then kill them in the same patch they were introduced. Why not let the Horde actually have good characters rather than just immediately sacrificing them?
Cause we’re the Legion of Doom to the Alliances Justice League (Don’t kill me comic people, I don’t know if they’re rivals or in the same universe, I think Bane’s involved?) we get cool “villian of the day” interesting characters, and then they get even MORE villian batted, or dedded, where the Alliance has the same reliable cast that always seems to be growing, and when one of them dies, ala Varian, it’s treated as something on the level as the death of superman.
Sylvannas uses some type of line about how her 10 thousand years of living as an elf has given literal lifetimes of experience with people’s behaviour to justify her seemingly precognition of events.
Tyrande and Malfurion now look at Anduin like “so if the story is going to actually acknowledge living as long as elves do gives them more experiences to draw from and makes them better political and military leaders due to this” than why the hell is this kid in my seat?