Compilation blizzard lies - Alliance edition

Its kind of like how much meat do you like on pizza? Meat being “revenge” for burning of teldrisil.

Blizzard: i like a single piece of pepperoni per slice.

Everyone else: thats it? May as well be vegi. You lie! you dont like meat at all!!

I guess my asperger’s brain draws a very hard line as to what constitutes a lie vs an opinion. I just thought that a lie is a very cut and dry action.

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More like them saying you will get peperoni suprime but there is just one peperoni on the pizza

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Not even that much pepperoni. They just spelled out the word “pepperoni” across the pizza. In olives.

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Is it a lie or is it a delusion?

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Oh, so their story teams do have communication issues after all?

Caulk that up as another lie.

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i think your half right, but the nzoth thing will be next expansion, as the post 8.2 raid talks about how we need to get rid of sylvanas so we can unify against nzoth

TL DR:

Hey we’ve got all this stuff we want to dig deeper in. Stay tuned bois!

LOL thanks for the fish and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

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I’m super uncomfortable using the word “lies” much too casually. I think it implies an intent that we just can’t know, is inherently hostile, and adds nothing to the discussion. Explicit lies should be called as such, but the story also has to be allowed to change direction. And Blizzard interpreting an event differently than you do, like Tyrande getting her revenge, doesn’t make it a “lie”, OP.

Lies are about facts and intent, not opinions. For instance, I strongly disagree that this has been a “faction pride” expansion. But I don’t think Blizzard lied about it. I think they were just wrong.

“Lie” is a loaded word.

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i agree with you, but i can’t help but think that this is a general sentiment with this expansion.
So much about this feels… wrong, out of place.

this isn’t what it was sold to us, this isn’t what we were expecting.
While i do think that we were getting some surprises along the way
that can be considered “good”

the bad outweighs the good, by example: the most important thing in this expansion was teldrassil,“you will be surprised with who burned the tree” there isn’t going back from that, and the story has been agonizing since then.

so whatever story they were planning with everything else they had in mind has been builded under that founding feels… wrong… like a lie…
(or maybe i am just being hyperbolic?)

i hope that i made myself clear.

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is it me or do these new story devs do nothing but lie lie lie? At least with the Metzen team you had writters honesty. Its like the writers have this mentality of being against its fans. Its like they hate us.

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Ha! Blizzard doesnt see the differance between these figurative pepperoni and olives story telling elements. Thats suprisingly accurate imo.

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Fair enough. To me, it just feels like they are out of touch.

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This is why the Blizzard writers need to wake up out of their stupor and realize writing around big moments without caring about the context that gets them there is backfiring.

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Not sure if this counts as a lie or not but straight for Alex’s mouth:

"[As far as Yrel’s BfA story is concerned] Honestly its funny, when it comes to storylines like this, its so dependent on the developer pushing forth that story. Like…what is someone passionate about? Wrathion would have never existed if there weren’t two very passionate designers that wanted to push the story forward.

[…] If someone’s passionate [about a particular character/story] they’ll push it, and push it, and push it … and we’re open and collaborative enough where there’s Overlord saying ‘It must be this way!’ […] I’m not going to stand in the other designers’ way […]"

Unless he misspoke, Alex gave the impression that as far as this expansion is going there is no grand plan. That Teldrassil was burnt to a crisp be because one or perhaps two people at Blizz aggressively, vocally pushed for that story beat because they wanted it, not because it was part of a grander narrative.

There’s no strategy, no “overlord” laying down the basic framework of a plot for this expansion, only developers who scream the loudest to have their favorite characters and tropes get focus, no matter how these fit organically or not.

Warlords was pushed because enough of the Blizzard developers liked the idea of metal orcs and WC2 nostalgia, and in the process retconning the demon blood’s influence on the orcs during their invasion to Azeroth.

Battle for Azeroth was pushed because someone really, really wanted the Night Elves’ home to go up in smoke, in the process implicate the entirety of the Horde as war criminals who did nothing to stop this onslaught.

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Interesting quote, Gerak. Do you have a link for it? (You can put it between two sets of `` if you’re not “allowed” to post links.)

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Sure
Can do YouTube for some reason no others

25:40

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I don’t see these statements as lies so much as changes of direction, and a complete inability on Blizzard’s part to understand their own players.

I really do think Blizzard had a couple of different ways to handle why Sylvanas burnt Teldrassil and why Anduin attacked Lordaeron, but somewhere they changed direction and all their previous statements suddenly made no sense.

Just to be clear - this is worse than lying. A lie in this case indicates a clear intent for BfA and the desire to mislead players, possibly to wrong-foot them when the truth is revealed. It’s certainly not about harming players, as Blizzard kind of depend on players to stay subbed.

Changing direction is much worse, as the endpoint isn’t fixed (or the story/journey isn’t), so there’s no good way to develop characters and plot. you can’t build a house on shifting sand, and you can’t write a story when you keep changing the plot. I feel player polling and reactions help drive Blizzard to change their mind.

We can see examples of it too. The Horde attack in Stormsong Valley that was initially written as a briarback attack. Horde players never even see it, although Alliance players are bludgeoned with the Horde’s moustache-twirling cruelty.

Rexxar said Jaina had to be stopped because she ‘killed too many’ (or something similar) but that never made it to the game. Another small change that leaves the game making less sense.

If the Alliance attacked Lordaeron first, a lot of the early interviews would make sense, and the Horde’s reaction at Teldrassil would be more acceptable. Certainly, no Horde players would feel so bad over retaliation.

The feeling of being one-all at half time would have helped us join together, as we always were going to, in order to combat the next big threat. We know we’re working together to fight Azshara in 8.2, but what Night Elf would work with the Horde now? What Orc or Forsaken would take orders from Jaina?

I think the game’s events were changed during development to pit the players against each other and maximise the reactions they have to this game. That’s right up there with writing by committee for how to turn in a terrible story.

I don’t think they were lies. I think they indicate a much worse problem.

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As for this one in particular, i feel like blizzard intended to make us feel how is to work with “your biggest enemies” and setting hatreds asside to fight the current big threat.

Now, i know that this is has been the theme for all wow history, but it never feel more… personal like right now.
What i mean is that, by example, working to fight deathwing or the legion was more… “acceptable” because people really were seeing the greater picture.
But now, with this “faction pride” as you TRULY hate your enemy with all the battles that we had right now, most recent examples are teldrassil and dazarlozor.
This time, blizzard really wanted players/factions agaisn’t each other,so now, you feel… like more passionated about the story.

Now i am not seeing that this is good at all, that blizzard purposely trigger as much people as possible to create this story that has everyone super angry. but… to some extend… it kinda worked what they wanted to do in that front.

as for the other yes, it is true that blizzard changed the directtion of the story, i do remember they admitting that they had another arc planned for jaina in blizzcon(and as we could see in the alpha dialogues) but… something changed along the way, they were planning for a story,but somewhere along the way, they changed it.

i didn’t feel it that way. because you or i don’t know what really happens in their “dojo”.

What if, someone who actually liked the night elves (or he/she thought that he/she liked, doesn’t matter) wanted to see more story for the night elfs characters? we already seen some major cultural change in the night elves , and Probably, they do are planning something else or greater for the night elfs characters for the future.

What i mean is that, what if there is some grander narrative stored for them? i guess that time will tell.

The team is not the issue. What’s needed is something that Blizzard never had, a JM Stracyzinksi who has direct command of all the creative elements and enforces a single vision, good, bad, or indifferent. It’s very clear that Metzen was never such a figure.

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They succeeded in getting Alliance players to hate the Horde. But Horde players are too busy hating “the other half” of the Horde to hate the Alliance.

Interesting. I don’t remember hearing about this. What did they say about Jaina, and what were the alpha dialogues? Do you think this has something to do with how Rexxar says she “killed too many”?

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