NEFPA do 2 things well:
- Whine
- Flail
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And also cry about why no one sympathizes with their insanity
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Well… you’ve done it now.
To be honest, I was thinking about making this move for several months. I love my hot take thread on Scrolls of Lore - but it makes it awfully hard to get my posts out. In the past I’ve had to use intermediaries. For the next month or so, I won’t. Yes, I am literally the protagonist from the Monty Python argument clinic skit here - and to that unknown marketing executive who wrecked an otherwise nice Friday in 2018 by serving that BFA ad to my professional account on Twitter? You finally did it - you got $15 from me. Now I’m going to spend the next month explaining how you can get me back as a consumer and not a critic.
Regarding the post earlier - the one that referenced Droite directly, I’m not sure why this wasn’t mentioned, but I will take responsibility for that - and I expect that Droite can explain her own position here without requiring people to make bizarre claims that posting a terse critique on a forum that she frequents in a thread that she’s been posting in about an argument she’s been making is “going behind her back”. It’s possible that I have her position wrong - I don’t think I do, but it’s possible. I look forward to the clarification if that’s the case.
Otherwise, I am going to use this opportunity to do what I intended to do with the Hot Take thread - create a series of posts that will lay out the framework that I use to judge this story, address common arguments that I don’t feel are being fully addressed, and perhaps inject my perspective as someone with a reasonable grasp of the business side of games and a proclivity to dive into the data once in a while. We may even get a 10-K review in - and it’s all thanks to the intransigence of a particular set of posters whose sneering and partisanship I always seem to run into. Congratulations!
Oh, and just to get this out of the way - no, I am not Elesana.
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I’d rather not have this thread further devolve into petty mudslinging. A lot of players are feeling downtrodden as of late. I would like to see that rectified, if possible. BFA was a blow to all of us, regardless of race or faction selected. I want to see some healing done in regards to it, rather than more petty squabbling between players grasping for grim narrative scraps.
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I agree that I’d prefer not to see a topic like this devolve into petty squabbling, but it already has, and it has because there are some people who argue for absolute faction maximalism when addressing the faction rivalry. That’s the genesis of all of this antagonism.
It’s natural in a rivalry to want to win every game, and remedying the Night Elf situation requires them to win a “game” against the faction rival, but them winning a game requires the other side to “lose” a game. That’s where the squabbling comes in. Now, I argue that there are ways to have them lose that game while making it feel close to a win, and while dealing with a lot of the Horde’s longstanding issues (because a Night Elf solution is by its nature incomplete without considering what can be set up for the other side) - but for some people, that runs into the brick wall of “yeah, but I have to lose”.
… and, the position that your side can never lose - and the application of that position to suggestions about how the story can be written - is an incompatible position if you have the objective of having a healthy rivalry that everyone is motivated to play in. It’s selfish and counterproductive - and I don’t mind calling out those who hold that position.
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Before that, we’d all have to agree on what constitutes winning and losing. There are posters in this forum that insist the Horde won BfA (overall) which brings up its own points of contention.
Of course you’re not the NEFPA Matriarch. You are not level 10, you have actual achieve points, and you’re not posting irrational head canon lamenting the state of the Night Elves or making illogical conclusions about the direction of the story.
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Before that, we’d all have to agree on what constitutes winning and losing. There are posters in this forum that insist the Horde won BfA (overall) which brings up its own points of contention.
That’s a good question. I hope I can answer it.
I’m going to step back to Scott Rigby’s model on the three psychological needs that people play video games to realize. Those are:
Autonomy - We can make choices.
Competence - We can effect our choices.
Relatedness - We matter through our choices.
I will also add that visuals blow text out of the water in terms of memorability and impact. A minute of video is worth roughly 1.8 million words - and I mention this because Blizzard typically has an issue with backing up what they say with what they put onscreen. They seem to believe that if a character says something, that they put something in quest text, or that they say something on twitter, then it has the same impact as if they put it in the game. It does not, and it doesn’t to the extent that I argue that to general audiences and even to those of us who are aware of the text - that it may not matter much at all.
So, when I’m referring to a win, I’m defining that to be an onscreen moment of defeating one’s opponent. It doesn’t count in my mind if it comes via exposition, through a book, or in any other fashion but one that is visual, and that is obvious to general audiences. A win is further, a competence-bounded concept. A win doesn’t turn into a loss over autonomy or relatedness issues. That isn’t to say that those issues aren’t worth discussing, but it is to say that they are the subject of a different discussion.
Hopefully that makes my perspective a bit clearer.
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Sure did, but not everyone is going to be on board with that framing. Personally, I don’t see the BoT, or the WoT as a whole, as a win for the Horde despite being shown as a “victory” on screen.
EDIT: Not saying your position is incorrect. Just pointing out that some may disagree with it and become dismissive.
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It’s hard to count it as a win, when blizzard showed the horde as suddenly being incompetent afterwards and loosing every single battle.
And Kyalin does bring up a lot of great points, but you know, a certain minority worn out their welcome and that makes people dismissive of legitimate grievances with the story. And I’m not innocent myself, I know I done it before.
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That depends on which side of the faction argument you’re on. On paper, it was a (pyrrhic) victory for the Horde. After that, not so much.
It wasn’t a Fist pump moment that blizzard was going for. It was a pretty horrifying experience really, for everyone.
It’s why I think a lot of people are bitter about BfA. It made EVERYONE, on both sides look pants on head stupid
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Totally agree, but some posters use it as an example of a Horde win when comparing the sides.
Yeah, I’m not going to pretend that I can convince everyone. Regarding the WoT though - I’ve heard that argument, and I think the disconnect in it is that it doesn’t separate the competence elements from the relatedness ones. The latter elements are certainly issues - but they don’t interfere with the idea that the Horde militarily can have its way with its counterparts.
Regarding Micah’s point, there are elements of truth in it, and I would primarily put my finger on Dazar’alor if I was looking for the best argument of the suite. My issue with it is that it doesn’t take into account how victories and losses are distributed across subfactions. In English: I’m not entirely sure how I’m supposed to regard it as payback when it looks like my playable race has been stuffed in the refrigerator so that humans can “save” us in a theater of war that doesn’t matter to me. Darkshore I guess tried to remedy this - but we then pull back into issues of presentation, resolution, and the inescapable little problem of it being Darkshore - which establishes a permanent loss position even in the best case. (Again, unless we assume things that the lore doesn’t tell us about Ashenvale, which I don’t, and wouldn’t regard as being satisfactory anyway unless they were onscreen).
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Yeah, but any person who actually played through BfA and was actually paying attention, never really makes those claims. It’s just the hardcore Team Blue posters who do.
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The WoT, in a vacuum, sure. Everything after that? Well…
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and was actually paying attention
I do want to underline this point.
As I think I’ve established by now - I don’t think that text is a very good means of conveying information in a visual, interactive medium. Most people didn’t read the tie-in novels. Most people don’t read quest text. Most people react to what’s in front of them, because that’s how human beings are.
You can have a well constructed and beautiful story in that quest text - and I’ve heard the arguments that there is one - but if you have failed to present it in the medium that you’re working with, then it’s not the audience’s fault that they don’t understand what you were going for. The fault for that lies with the writer.
This is the worst place for you to do it. Blizzard pays these forums the least amount of attention. You should be taking this to general discussion, or in development, forums that developers actually pay attention to.
They could not care less about what a little community of roleplayers argue about.
The Wildhammers are one third of the Ironforge Council. If they were subjected to a massive attack they’d expect the Alliance to intervene given the support the Wildhammers have been giving even when they weren’t technically Alliance members.
And once that ball gets rolling, it wouldn’t be long before it snowballs out of the control
In before ‘wildhammer are a legitimate military target’ so there’s no reason for dwarves or alliance to get upset.