So 8.2 broadcast text are out. Spoilers obviously.
It is 5.2s story. That is not an exaggeration, that is not a joke, that is exactly what it is.
Lor’themar and Jainas forces land on a new island that has recently stirred up trouble for our war effort. They realize they can’t topple this new enemy without working together.
So they form a truce. At the end of the raid, they decide the war needs to end, so they they agree to stop fighting, and Lor’themar goes to join The Horde rebellion.
Blizzard, are you going to repeat Mist of Pandaria, but rather than Sylvanas being defeated, shes going to escape and make her own faction? Did you hate the ending of MoP that much?
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Its time to trash the writers. They are incapable of reading the room or creating a compelling story.
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I just don’t understand why this is happening.
It’s not just similarities, it’s the exact same story. It’s so bizare.
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Didn’t they say something to the effect of not thinking the ending taught anything?
Basically. To paraphrase, they’ve said they don’t feel the Horde quite learned the lesson they were supposed to at the end of MoP, while also practically saying they believe they could tell MoP’s story better than the story team that wrote MoP. All while simultaneously denying this is a rehash of MoP.
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I mean, we haven’t, but only because they wrote us to have not learned it.
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If I remember correctly, what they said was that MoP didn’t fully resolve the question of “What is the Horde?”
Edit: Found it.
“There has always been some question as to what the Horde stood for,” said Danuser. “And that has changed and evolved over time. Is it this disparate collection of outcasts that nobody will align themselves with? And that’s why they’re together, out of necessity? Or is it this group that’s driven by honor and courage? Players have been able to identify and pull out parts of the storyline that they favor and maybe turn a blind eye to some of the other things, but all of those things have been part of the Horde’s history.
“While we’ve had conflicts like the Siege of Orgrimmar, none of those really resolved what the Horde is. Battle for Azeroth is absolutely an opportunity to look at both sides [honorable and evil] that have made up the Horde storylines throughout the years and pull them together. And maybe give a chance for the Horde to look inward and maybe become something new, something stronger than it ever was before.
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It’s literally MoP 2.0 point by point.
imgur . com/a/dASSREm
AU Time Travel or Bizarro Azeroth next expansion
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It’s garbage, is what it is. I can understand bad writing, that happens from time to time. What shouldn’t happen, however, is Blizzard baiting its players by saying “wait and see, it’s not what you think,” and then it turns out to be EXACTLY what we thought (if not worse), and what we’d been most worried about.
It’s lazy writing that they’re trying to present as ‘darker, and with a twist’, when in fact it’s just flat out insulting. I’ve never felt more disconnected with the story in game than I do right now, and it’s incredibly disappointing.
I think back to George Lucas with Episode I talking about the parallels between the trilogies, and how there is a rhythm to things, and how they mirror each other, yada yada. This isn’t that, however; this is Blizzard absolutely trashing their own game for absolutely no damn reason.
They’ve been so dismissive towards the players about it too, and that’s infuriating.
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There are some differences and a lot of it rides on 8.3 and how cleanly this ends. It’s something that should not have depended solely on its third act when the first and second acts are so frustrating, but whatever.
MoP went into how the Horde races fit together but it didn’t go into its morality. Forsaken were still off on the side doing evil stuff and were still at odds with the honorable Horde. When these two things clashed it was annoying and definitely noticed by the playerbase. BFA is putting that on the forefront. Sylvanas isn’t abusing the Horde for no reason like Garrosh did. She’s angling to make it strong as long as they’re loyal, even if she has to burn bridges (and people) in the process.
There’s a point of frustration that loyalists have because BFA is so different: In MoP, your race was probably being attacked by Garrosh. And he tries to kill you in the Vol’jin scenario because you’re a witness and he’s a butt. In BFA, you’d be fine as long as you fell in line. BFA seems to be heading toward defining whether or not the Horde is going to ditch the part of themselves that would commit genocide if it had the slightest chance of helping them win a war.
But that doesn’t seem to be where the expansion is going. Sylvanas led the Horde as well as the Alliance into a trap in Nazjatar. There’s several hints that she’s warring against all life. If she turns on the loyalists for no reason, or if she tries to turn the Horde undead, then the plot breaks down completely.
It would also be super nice if the Alliance actually had a conflict between zeal and mercy, two warring parts of their own faction that are never addressed. Man, so much missed opportunity.
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I like how that post goes into detailing about Alliance internal struggles, yet I don’t think we’ve seen anything of that nature yet.
Aside from Tyrande telling Anduin to stuff it and taking back Darkshore. Which he didn’t care about to begin with, and didn’t matter because it hardly affected our Dazar’lor plan.
Lol typical Blizzard. “We haven’t forgotten The Alliance.” throws table scraps
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She has already done this; has Lordaeron already been forgotten?
I mean the whole Horde. Not using them as emergency cannon fodder, I mean she decides they’re better off undead and begins to systematically convert them.
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SoO raid; she’s already insinuated that she’d raise Lor’themar’s rangers, and while it isn’t in game, with how many soldiers have died in this war, I’d be amazed if there weren’t instances of the Val’kyr being put to use on Horde corpses somehow. They were certainly hard at work in Silverpine back in the Cata questing, and that was quickly overlooked and forgotten.
Edit: Also I see what you’re saying. I can’t imagine we’re far off from that though, with all the “undead can’t be affected by the void” stuff that’s been thrown around.
I still don’t understand how possessing an army composed solely of decaying corpses is going to protect her from the infinity when it’s already been shown that she needs the living to replenish her forces. Forsaken don’t enjoy eternal life and the Val’kyr have been shown that they can’t create eternal Forsaken with ease. So if that’s really the direction Blizz is going with, then it makes even less sense. Especially when an army like that will be easy fodder for someone like Bolvar to take advantage of. If she were aiming for the Helm of Domination or a similar power, then maybe.
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I- well, hold on.
wraps tinfoil around his head
Right. I have a sneaking suspicion that this current crop of writers, Alex, Dansuer, Golden etc… didn’t have a lot of say in the writers room back during MoP. Shocking thought, I know, but I do wonder if that’s maybe at the core of… well all of this. That if they had had their way back then it would’ve been Sylvanas, fresh after recruiting a ton of new Scourge friends in Cata, getting the axe rather then Garrosh. Who was a new character who had limitless potential in front of him, potential that would’ve fallen to those younger writers to follow up on as opposed to characters like, say, Thrall who were already clearly defined.
But then Metzen and Kosak and the rest of the old guard come in. They push for Sylvanas to stick around because they like her, or at least her edge, and push villain batting Garrosh. He’s already a bit controversial with the player base and he stands in pretty stark contrast to the ways of the “new Horde” that Thrall and co were supposed to have established. That Metzen and co established. So MoP comes, Garry gets chucked under the bus and Sylvanas gets her stay of execution. At least until now when those once junior writers are now running the show and can decide what the Hordes issues actually are and go right some old wrongs.
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The problem with that is they went too far with the War of Thorns. It is not a morally gray war with moments that make the Horde question their methods, it is an “Alliance Good” situation kicked off by genocide that will forever tarnish anything good about the Horde.
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Bingo, and it is 100% why I’ll probably never have the stomach to go back to playing Horde at all in the future. Sucks, but they went way too far for no damn reason at all.
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Nah there was a reason.
They wanted to do a faction war, and knew it would make no sense unless someone did something incredibly stupid.
Thus, I give you War of The Thorns.
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In ten minutes I (and most other people) can think up a dozen or more ways to tell that same story without it being god awful garbage. They can do better, and they should.
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