If they hadn’t essentially made Wildhammer playable with the Shadowlands options I’d say go for it cause the Wildhammer weren’t playable.
I’m not sure I’m ready for a 5th War with the current writing team. Or ever, really.
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I don’t know your friends so obviously you can speak to their motivations better than I can/will, but I know a lot of people who left during BFA as well. Mine didn’t have much to do with the story regarding Night Elves dying. As far as story goes, it did have something to do with N’zoth getting one patch, BFA being advertised as a faction war that was effectively a tiny portion of content, and a number of missteps. It had more to do with the fact that BFA was anti-alts and had a lot of systems that were just unfriendly to players. Many days just seemed like logging on to do chores. Most folks just didn’t enjoy it. Shadowlands has doubled down on a lot of those concepts.
I don’t think I know of anyone who would quit if Tyrande died. I don’t think she will die. I do know people who are already at the point of just not wanting to log on because of the systems in place. And I’d argue the fact that it is both Horde (most of whom have no love for Night Elves or Tyrande) and Alliance folks quitting means it has more to do with gameplay than characters. Though maybe Horde folks are quitting partly due to Sylvanas’ portrayal.
The Wildhammer getting booted wouldn’t cause the 5th war.
My friends list heavily concerned Night Elves in the story and WoT killed it pretty hard. All of the Night Elf guilds run by the OG Night Elf Fans have died out on Moon Guard.
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If the Horde invaded any Alliance land after everything that happened, it would 100% cause the 5th war. Like it or not Aerie Peak is Alliance territory.
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Sorry I should have been more specific. I agree with you that now it would for sure. If they hadn’t made Wildhammer Dwarves pseudo playable through new customization then I don’t think it would have.
I also don’t believe the Wildhammer want to live in Grim Batol anymore.
They seem to quite like building their homes above ground with the gryphons instead of under it.
Fans are the consumers that it is intended to reach out to. If they are participating and consuming, the end-game is accomplished.
I would even wager that was why they did it, because they knew that it would effect the most amount of people in the least amount of steps.
Yes. With a lot of edits (to, admittedly, an underwhelming story anyways) before it left the PTR. As opposed to the deafening silence that was offered when myself and a sizable portion of other people reached out to say that Brennadam was off-tune, as was War of Thorns.
That it received any feedback at all, no matter how lackluster it was, it was a lot more than anything else that was being given attention. I feel that is important to stress. It provoked a response out of them. They actually did something. Companies do not do anything unless they see something financially disruptive or an opportunity to make money.
You’re not going to get me to go out on stage and agree with how badly they wrote Darkshore, because, well, it was bad, like the rest of BFA, but surely you should see how much that means when within the context of a soulless corporation.
A shortcoming, maybe, but, the whole point of the conversation wasn’t that they didn’t show Tyrande appropriate story time, it’s that they won’t kill her off or do anything bad to her, because she is financially valuable as an asset. I cannot stress this enough; money talks to them. They don’t do anything without the incentive. That they did anything at all (reactively and half-assed, sure) implies to me that she is valuable to them as a commercial asset.
It makes no sense, otherwise.
That’s not how that works, though. Artist depictions are based on what’s immediately relevant to the story (sans Grommash, since WOD had some really weird cut-ups along the way). Box art depictions are usually to underline the antagonist or the central point of the story (BC had Kael’thas and Maraad as a side piece, WOTLK had Arthas, Cata had Deathwing, MOP had Stormstout because hey, pandaland! WOD being Grommash as head of the Iron Horde, Legion as Illidan since he’s the literal center of that story from start to finish, BFA was humans and orcs and Shadowlands is Bolvar, since he’s deadass the Lich King.). Patch related art focuses on immediate content (and, in that Talanji v Jaina art, that was because it was the literal raid coming out, the core of the game, probably the singlemost important part of that patch in terms of what you’re accessing and playing through).
If you want a unit of measurement I can actually give you, Tyrande appears very frequently throughout Cataclysm, MOP (even though it contained ALP, jesus christ, that), Legion and then BFA (the pile of dog droppings expansion).
She’s far from their thoughts, if she pops up so frequently.
If you’re looking for me to link you something along the lines of exact language used in a shareholder’s call, I don’t have that, because they don’t use that sort of language in those calls.
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Yes, that was a point of contest with my friends as well (and me, for that matter. 8.3 was such a colossal waste. N’zoth could had been his own expansion. It made no sense for the BFA narrative. It was just… bad. Very bad.).
But, it’s such a broad subject. I have one nice thing to say about BFA and that is that it introduced Bwonsamedi. You can’t throw a cat without hitting something bad. So, I figured it didn’t need elaborating on, since, y’know, gestures broadly at everything.
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During the warfront itself Malfurion regrows the trees of the forest to undo the Horde’s destruction, and even the blight is cleared out by the Night Elves for that matter.
Because Alliance can do that. Would that horde had someone as powerful to regrow stuff in Durotar.
Edit: This is not a dig on Alliance, more a complaint about the writing.
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Or we can just do it through a proxy war like the good old days. Using that as an opportunity to propel the Revantusk into a position of power within the Forest Trolls b4 future diplomatic ties. Regardless, Aerie Peak is sort of a very irritating symbol of how if you screw up your own lands … you can just go take what little territories the Trolls have left. Its also a nightmare defensively and geographically for the Alliance.
If Old God corruption is on the way out, its time the Wildhammer get the hell home and reunite their peoples. Rather than having their capital half a continent away from a sizable bulk of their population like they do now. Grim Batol would make a very cool capital again. And the Wetlands and Highlands are their true ancestral homelands. Homelands that they called home truly not that long ago.
To be fair… this just seems like one of those arbitrary things that Malfurion can just do, but then Blizzard forgets that.
Like if Malfurion can do this, considering how neutral he has been prior to BfA, why hasn’t he just been growing trees and stuff for the Orcs and Horde to use? That makes way more sense than both sides being antagonistic towards each other… but then again it’s Blizzard.
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Not sure how arbitrary it is, Cenarius was shown to do the exact same thing in WC3 and it stands that Malfurion learned it from him.
But, your right, why not just grow more foliage for the Horde so they leave the Night Elven territory alone?
Druids can do this, but druids are protector of the balance, it´s maybe against the balance of the dream, and so would malfurion not let grow other trees. Druidism is about balance and in harmony with nature.
The “proxy” war thing was an excuse for battlegrounds to exist and there were no precedent of a massive war between the two factions happening just months before. If the Revantusk (part of the Horde) attack the Wildhammer (part of the Alliance, also now part of the Council of Three Hammers) all-out war would break out guaranteed.
Okay sure, as long as the Blood Elves hand Quel’thalas back to the Amani. Playing the game of “who kicked the trolls’ butts before” just doesn’t end well for anyone.
Reunite with whom? As far as I know all of the Wildhammer are either in Aerie Peak or Twilight Highlands. They can’t hold more than one territory at once? Aerie Peak is their home now.
It would be damned hard for them to do that so long as the Forsaken Hold Hillsbrad, the one overland access point from the Highlands to the Hinterlands. And as for the Blood Elves, sure they do have that “we’re taking your land thing” too, but they have several thousand years rather than several hundred tops being where they are; and because of the Sunwell they literally cannot leave that region without damning their entire population. They DON’T have a place to return to, the Wildhammer absolutely do.
Long story short, Aerie Peak is a disaster of a location in terms of defense, in terms of geography, and in terms of theme. The Wildhammer do have a home to return to now if Magni is correct, they won’t damned their entire population by trying to move like the BEs would. And frankly, if it weren’t for the fact that Blizz refuses to ever validate Horde problems … there are territories on both continents we really would benefit from. Like Stonetalon on Kalimdor for a Horde now trying to support 5 different communities in land so environmentally destroyed even the NEs couldn’t fix it. But, since Blizz loves to just villain bat the Horde … it seems the only route for our faction left is to become a footnote in the Alliance’s stories from now on.
It’s because the resource war stuff of Cata was basically backwards reasoning to justify why they wanted the horde to become more aggressive in the first place. As far as I know, there wasn’t a starvation issue until suddenly there was, to explain why Garrosh wanted a war.
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Or … the fact that culturally the NEs would never grow trees solely for the purposes of harvesting them; let alone for the Horde’s needs. They at least aren’t supposed to exploit nature like that. Also, Durotar has always been prone to famines as far as I’m aware. Its a desert that is a desert largley because of the massive amount of chaotic arcane energy that seeped into the land because of the sundering. Its essentially a Arcane Radiation Fallout Zone that has been let sit for 10k years.