Eh, they definitely make it more difficult, but so do things like continuity and the medium that you’re working in. If writers ignore those things, they run a greater risk of producing a story that their audience won’t like - and especially when they’re writing a story that exists to help sell a game, they do have to be conscious of that sort of thing.
“Know your audience” isn’t a new or controversial concept. So I am going to shift the blame for this from the audience back to the writers. They need to respect what the fans saw in the previously generated material, and seek to iterate on, not destroy that. If they’re not willing to do that, then I’m confident in saying that they should look for something else to work on.
To be fair, its exist no “we”, we are a multimillion playerbase. its exist no “we” certain grps and player likes certain things, look alone in this forum.
Honest BFA just didn’t sync up well with the setting as it’d been presented before.
I’ve heard rumors Teldrassil was supposed to be burned by Slyvanas using a shard of Sargeras’s sword, and I’m still flabbergasted it wasn’t done with some Azerite warhead missle or something.
Like I get the Cenarions had help but they’re led by Malfurion and they were able to defend the world tree from the elemental plane of fire. But they had no contingency for just regular catapults? Small wonder a drunk Dwarf passing out with a lit cigar didn’t torch the place years ago, seeing as Teldrassil ignited like it was made from dried pinewood tied together with oily rags.
And I’ve harped on it before but Slyvanas doing a 180 on her most interesting and redeeming character trait was jarring. It certainly left Nathanos speechless and we’ve seen that is no easy feat. But when it resulted in only Voss questioning her after she flagrantly violated like the only other taboo in Forsaken society it just felt insulting.
The more you start to try to make sense of what happened, the less sense it makes. Blizzard didn’t care. They wanted a shock moment, and they weren’t going to let logic, logistics, prior lore, facts that they established previously within the same story, my investment, your investment, or the concerns of anyone other than themselves stand in the way.
Pretty much. It was certainly shocking but I think they were going for Game of Throne’s Red Wedding, but instead gave us Game of Throne’s series finale.
The principal issue with that is that an MMO is not a passive medium, or one that’s seen from a detached perspective. By its nature, it’s wrapped up in player identity - and the Burning of Teldrassil attacked a lot of those. It’s one thing when it’s happening to someone else, it’s quite another when you feel that it’s happening to you.
The kicker for me is that those big dramatic set pieces felt disconnected from the rest of the game.
If the rest of BFA was a Cata esque revisit of Vanilla zones where we saw the Horde and Alliance charging eachother like batteries from Alterac to Un’Goro it’d have at least felt like an appropriate start to a World War expansion.
But BFA feels like a high seas adventure expansion with a building Old God twist that had the Blood War tacked onto it. It very easily could’ve been the Horde and Alliance getting drawn into a more isolated conflict between the Zandalari and Kul Tirans.
They’re both naval powerhouses with a history of racism. Stands to reason they’d want to choke the other out so they could be the unquestionable ruler of the waves. Very little would have to be changed about the non Blood War content for this to be the case.
Because outside Arathi and Darkshore all the really cool world war stuff was happening on the mission table.
I still remember reading one that said Ivar Bloodfang had besieged Shadowfang Keep with aid from a Gnomish spider tank division. Horde reinforcements arrived in the form of Forsaken mounted dreadguard and Sin’Dorei battlemages being led by Garona Halforcen herself.
That sounds like an awesome scenario I really want to play. But I’m far too important to fight a bunch of werewolves and laser tanks outside a haunted castle. Nah I got more thrilling stuff to do like uh, collect hyena poop and make sure these turtles make it to the water.
I was initially more positively disposed to Calia. Mostly because I rather enjoy Paladin but sadly can never main one as I can’t play them as my favorite race. Was hopeful she’d remedy that.
I’m seriously surprised she didn’t at least bring in like a Lightforged Undead AR. But ARs like most of BFA’s features and plots seemed to fall into the ditch of irrelevance by the time we were watching Wrathion fight N’Zoth with the exaggerated swagger of a black dragon.
I’m almost tempted to believe them when they say she wasn’t supposed to be the Forsaken leader. Because she’s so fundamentally wrong for them by every conceivable metric. She’s described as; smooth, unblemishedandglowingfromwithinwithanarrestinglight.
Which just isn’t how I’d describe any Forsaken. Her color pallette isn’t even right. Gold, red and white instead of the purple, navy and green. And the real kicker is if Blizz had the chutzpah to make her both a dirty goth cannibal and conventionally attractive they’d have gotten millions in free marketing if the internet’s reaction to Resident Evil 8 proves anything.
HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Oh wait you serious? Let me laugh HARDER!
The High Elves got 90% of their population exterminated and NO CHOICE at being raised into undead abominations to slaughter their kin.
So yeah we trump the night elves hard at that.
Frankly, I would prefer for Blizzard to actually commit to and stick with major changes to the game’s status quo so that story developments actually have some sort of meaning.
The narrative meaning of things like cities changing hands or being destroyed is lost if we hold the post-Third War status quo as something that must be preserved and returned to at all costs.
I’d argue that the destruction of locations does not add to narrative tension, but robs us of future story potential. Take Theramore, for instance. A Human kingdom on Kalimdor had plenty of potential plot threads, that was squandered for cheap destruction shock value. This is even more prominent for Forsaken and Night Elves, who are very tied to a sense of place: Lordaeron and the forests of Kalimdor. By robbing them of home and hearth, you take away a lot of their narrative impetus. They no longer become world powers with culture and history, but aimless refugees.
I think Night Elves and Forsaken deserve more narrative than the dead ends that are the streets of Stormwind and Orgrimmar.
The best Warcraft stories have come at the expense of the status quo; preserving it indefinitely means nothing that happens will ever truly matter. There’s no reason those on the receiving end of change be rolled into the human/orc stories and forgotten about.
My biggest gripe with WoW is how static the world is. Things like Stromgarde being rebuilt should be more commonplace.
Oh, okay. So when are Orcs going to get Draenor back, Humans going to get the Seven Kingdoms back, Draenei going to get Argus back, High/Void Elves get Quel’thalas back, Gnomes get Gnomeregan back, Dwarves get Grim Batol back, Trolls get the Echo Isles back, Worgen get Gilneas back, Goblins get Kezan back, etc?
Why is it okay for literally everyone else to have suffered cataclysmic defeats that robbed them of their home territories but not for the Night Elves or Forsaken?
I’m a big human fan, and humans would be way better off if we undid the events of Warcraft 3. Should we do that?
None of those things were done to the fans of a playable race in an MMO. Such matters because the MMO is about expressing one’s identity in the character they select - and the Night Elves and the Forsaken - as fanbases - had to go through having those things happen to them directly.
The humans lost the seven kingdoms in an RTS - where the level of engagement isn’t even close to being as high. In an RTS you are a detached, third person director. You’re not on the ground, and unless you’re losing the match, it’s not happening to you. (Heck, you’re usually the one causing it)
The Draenei lost Argus entirely offscreen, and before you could even roll one.
Void Elves were created well after the event, and High Elves were never an MMO choice - and even in the RTS, Blizzard did not give you the option of playing as them in a losing campaign against Arthas.
The Gnomes loss of Gnomeregan happened offscreen before you could even roll a gnome.
Dwarves, same.
Trolls, same.
Worgen/Goblins - those are the only cases where you do have direct application - but it’s also hard to stack two hours worth of content that they literally don’t let you go back to against something that you had invested in for years beforehand. (Edit - although there’s a difference here. Worgen were unceremoniously dumped in a now-destroyed tree. Goblins meanwhile got an upgrade for their trouble - so it’s not a perfect comparison in either case)
If the Draenei were built up as being martially strong and having all of this great stuff where the game invited you to live out that fantasy before it said “just kidding, that was all a lie, now watch as everything you invested in is destroyed before your very eyes because we literally can’t think of any other way to promote faction conflict”, I’d agree with you, but that’s not what happened.