Who is saying this?
What do you think people mean when they say they want “race fantasy”? They mean they want their race to be in the spotlight, instead of accepting that their goofy troll or gnome or whatever is a minor side-character.
There is though, it should be easy to come up with a story about Earthmother, the balance between Sun and Moon, learn more about Tauren Understanding of Mu’sha and An’she.
And elaborate that Tauren unlike Nelves don’t want to turn everything into lush forests, that they see every environment to be a work of nature, and understanding that mother earth sometimes needs so time and we shouldn’t rush it. It would give a distinct philosophy to them that would make them stand out.
So you’re for even bigger homogenisation and for developers to not even try to focus on worldbuilding and making the world feel richer.
3 Likes
So instead of reading it charitably as “I want X race to have more development, because they are sidekicks who have done nothing of note” you read it as “I want my race to have an exclusive spotlight and take on the exact same importance as Orcs & Humans?”
This seems like you’re purely motivated by thumbs downing development for races, which you basically admit they could use, in favor of shoving everyone into some homogenized class hall because “Legion was good :))))”
Big surprise from the Shadowlands defender, I guess!
1 Like
Yes.
The painting is complete. We do not need to paint and repaint and repaint the same picture over and over.
Nightborne stuff? The Suramar society? Cool, sure, this is a new civilization/faction we’ve never seen before that sort of also informs some history of another faction. But we don’t need pointless cul-de-sacs just to placate people who go “wah wah my race leader hasn’t gotten enough screen time recently”.
Blizzard’s story-telling in DF was awful because they’ve been so distracted trying to pander to the loudest and most vocal with this nonsense instead of telling the Warcraftian stories people actually want.
Yes, tha’ts how I read it, because that’s how these conversations go. This dialogue has played out plenty of times before.
Weird that neither I or Zanthora are taking that line. You would think if it always goes this way, one of us would be.
So what that would be according to you?
This is someone who liked Shadowlands & complimented its story early on, so who knows.
I can’t imagine he’d be talking about something like WotLK, where racial development was given a pretty big focus.
1 Like
The anima drought story was great. Still haven’t changed my mind about that. The lead-up to Nathria was amazing. The pacing worked quite well.
Start off in the Maw, experience the sort of Shadowlands you expected with it being drab and miserable, fight our way out, get a reprieve, then we get to experience the good side of the afterlife, see what might be worth fighting for.
Elysian Fields, very iconic image in my mind. We learn of some of the breakdown of the zone, learn some of the conflicts going on, then we reach out to one of the other realms. Only to learn that they’re also experiencing a breakdown.
We go to Maldraxxus and experience what you might expect out of “Wrath of the Lich King 2”, we go through an epic plot line with a Civil War, eventually we head out to Ardenweald.
Granted this third zone is more of a… “we built it so we need to send players there” situation, and honestly it’s just its own self-contained story, but it is touching to see Yzzy again and also it makes the stakes much more personal for the anima drought knowing that characters we know are being killed off for good as a result of the drought. Very pretty zone, some moments and characters that stand-out, but yeah this is I guess a pit-stop before the Third Act.
Then we go to Revendreth and the wheels finally start turning in terms of learning the truth about the anima drought which culminates in the reveal of Denathrius and the lead-up to the raid. Then we go through the raid, and amazing raid, epic raid really, we get that confrontation with Denatharius, and although we eventually do defeat him, we know he sent all of that anima to the Jailer and now the Jailer is poised to become a threat to us.
Now of course they didn’t follow through on that but you really can’t tell me that Shadowlands doesn’t have one of the best stories. It does. Patch 9.0 is honestly one of the best campaigns. I think only WoD beats Shadowlands in terms of its first patch. WoD is more streamlined and focused than Shadowlands of course, but also WoD cheats in a certain sense because it makes use of a lot more legacy characters, whereas Shadowlands for better or worse spends a lot of time setting up the cast of characters you’re going to interact with.
And the characters in Shadowlands are great. Prince Renethal, Dreamweaver, Draka, Theotar, Marileth, Draven. Bastion didn’t really have that many good characters since the plot-line ended up being overshadowed by the Pelagos nonsense as well as Uther, but the other three realms had plenty of good characters. We also got the return of Kael and Vashj and seeing them together again was fun.
If you guys want to mald about the Jailer, fine. If you want to say 9.1’s cliffhanger was lame, fine. Sylvanas’s “I won’t serve”, sure. But you’re just a salty little boi if you’re going to try to argue Shadowlands didn’t actually have good story-telling otherwise.
Like, let’s be real here, the only time Dragonflight even did anything was A) giving the three Black Dragon Bois some time together and B) the Blue Dragonflight quest chain. Everything else was a giant waste of time. Jesus. DF has taken up two years and there’s almost nothing to show for it. What a disaster.
I mean think about this, you mentioning SL story was bad set on a path of writing a bunch of paragraphs, because I enjoyed it a lot and think more people should enjoy it. I haven’t seen a single person who actually coherently argues why DF is a good sotry. They just accuse you of being a transphobe if you don’t like DF or whatever nonsense. It’s cringe. It’s actually %%%%%ing cringe.
I don’t like DF, I think it’s bad. I chose not to play DF for the most part.
Shadowlands is set on a faulty premise. Any narrative arc built on that foundation is going to be bad. It doesn’t matter what “compelling story” they manage to contrive if it cuts against the foundations of earlier iterations of lore.
1 Like
“The story is bad because it wrecked my headcanon”. Sounds like we’re done here.
The story is bad because it required retconning huge chunks of lore stretching all the way back to WCIII. Who here is talking about headcanon?
2 Likes
I agree 100%. I think it’s consistently one of the biggest missed opportunities blizz does with this game. They experiment with game modes now ala plunderstorm and now mop remix , no doubt to try and infuse more interest into the game to keep those monthly subs coming. But yet the captain obvious answer has been there all along and they even tapped into it with legion— class specific content!
The best way to make playing a class more fun and interesting— make content JUST for that class and make rewards for that class.
Sure there’s a lot of classes to creat e content for but they already were on the right path once before!
I liked legion probably more than any other expansion because I really dig rpg games that let you really sink into that particular class.
Such a shame blizz seems to not be interested though.
2 Likes
Yeah, race is as, or more, important than class. Especially where race and class meet and you get unique takes on each class based on which race it is.
And then things like the class halls just smushed that and homogenized everyone into a singular thing.
The “race andies” thing is just a sad troll that’s best ignored.
2 Likes
How so? do u mean the mop incident?
Not what I had in mind, but that is representative of it. More that Orc & Troll mages working alongside the Kirin Tor requires the Kirin Tor to lose all of its characterization, become just a bland “mage place” and non-Human/Blood Elf Mages spend an expansion being subservient to a Human Mage Kingdom-but-kind-of-not-really-maybe-question-mark.
Racial Fantasy is undermined by being subservient to these organizations, but these organizations themselves have to become more bland to accomodate these races. Literally nobody benefits.
1 Like
Legion was trash
Its going to take time for non humans to get into positions of power at the Kirin tor, I think it would be silly if it happened in a single expansion. I like seeing all the tauren mages in quests for example, even vulpera and pandaren.
I don’t know how that would make it bland, its making it realistic since we don’t have an orc mage on the council yet. XD
I also wouldn’t say racial fantasy is being undermined, I am sure these races take their culture with them and in the future we will see examples of that, I just don’t want to see an area in the mage quarters devoted to culture of all races, that would be the apex of silly.
But a school that teaches anyone with the aptitude? it would attract anyone.
Legion was the last good expansion…
This is kind of the point. It’s not a school, this isn’t Hogwarts. The Kirin Tor is the magocratic ruling class of Dalaran, one of the human kingdoms. You being there on a Troll, or an Orc does both a disservice to you & to the Kirin Tor.
Defending the fact that there aren’t any Orcs on the Council of Six is missing the point to a massive degree.
1 Like