A new Blizzcon, a new expansion announced, a new wave of hype, and lots of people are excited for what’s to come. As somebody who’s not, I say: Let people have fun.
If you’re like me and have a pretty low opinion of the state of Warcraft and aren’t impressed by anything Blizzard’s offering for the next expac, let’s all whine and moan and gripe and kvetch in this thread and let the folks speculating and theorizing and hoping in all the other threads enjoy themselves. Blizzcon comes just once a year; we can let 'em have that.
Come crank with me, fellow cranky cranks.
For my personal thoughts… Meh.
I’m utterly sick of Sylvanas and not looking forward to more of her helming the story. The trailer was cool looking, but Blizzard always does good trailers and I’m wary of being burned by their slick production values.
I’m currently unsubbed, and my thoughts on coming back is that I will definitely not be pre-ordering Shadowlands, and almost certainly won’t pick it up when it launches either. I pre-ordered BfA and damn did that burn me; having quit partway through WoD and being persuaded to come back during Legion, I found that a much better experience. Given Blizzard’s track record recently, I am going to wait a few months for the reviews to be in before I plunk down any more money. But I’ll probably buy a month of gametime when Shadowlands launches just to scope out the new leveling system, maybe finish up the BfA tasks I left undone because I simply can’t be bothered anymore.
I’m still unsubscribed and uninstalled from the whole ActiBlizz machine for “political reasons” but I’ll admit, I looked towards Blizzcon with some optimism. Some stuff looks neat but they definitely didn’t win me back with “In 2020 you can finally be an actual person of color” customization options and the threat of two more years of Sylvanas.
If anything I think the general population gasping and succumbing to the vapors crying about the leaps and bounds of innovation as Blizzard clumsily adds “What The Other MMOs People Have Been Leaving Us For Do” to their repertoire says a lot about why they’re never going to go anywhere. They do “begrudgingly start adding things people have been asking us for” with style.
There was definitely a lot of stuff shown that was like, IN CASE OF EXPANSION FAILURE BREAK GLASS. BoFA made them pull out a lot of tricks to try and win people back.
If I get this expansion, I feel like it’s going to be solely because the new customization options. They were the only thing in the entire presentation that caught my interest.
That and not actively punishing me for playing my alts, but I really don’t want to let that be accepted as a feature to pay for with an expansion
Yeah there’s not much that actually felt like it was grabbing me. The Sylvanas stuff is obnoxious, the new afterlife stuff feels like it steamrolls over older lore, and the new covenants just feel kind of…
Maldraxxus: bone guys. They like to fight.
Fae: they’re the fey. That’s it.
Vynthir or whatever: literally the Blood Dragon vampires from Warhammer.
Bastion: the “good” guys that aren’t actually good and look like LoL characters
They don’t feel inspired at all for something that should be so significant. We’re in the realms of death and we’re dealing with these generic groups while we know there are like, race specific afterlives (at least The Other Side is gonna be in as a dungeon) and such.
Where’s the Light? Where’s the Shadow? This place existed before the Titans? Well okay. What does that actually mean?
It also feels like they were intentionally avoiding the question of what factions mean for mortals now. Like, what do the Horde and Alliance have to do with this? They were entirely focused on the afterlife factions with no mention of the factions that define the game.
It doesn’t hugely surprise me that Blizzard is just tossing out new lore that curbstomps their old lore, that’s pretty much par for the course.
At least the benefit of an expac in another plane of existence is not having to roll my eyes at another whole continent that magically appeared on Azeroth and nobody knew about before, except everybody sorta did, shh don’t think about it.
I also can’t glance in the direction of the Jailer’s outline and not just see Malthael from Reaper of Souls which… yeah it’s nice that you have a fairly recognizable and consistent art style across all your games but when we’re reaching for anything new, worth following along for I don’t want to just snap my fingers and go “Ohhh it’s that guy from the last death themed thing you did!”
Well part of it is also the fact of the “adventure ceiling” - the power creep. It’s something I’ve never been able to follow, like…
WoW: we fought some dragons and killed Ragnaros on the material plane. That was a big deal, but it was relatively lowkey.
tBC: we went to Outland! We beat up Kil’jaeden and Arthas and Kael’thas. Alien and Spelljammer-ish, but…
WotLK: back to mostly mundane stuff, then dealing with Arthas. But Ulduar had some major implications.
Cata: Deathwing and the elementals! The biggest stuff yet!
MoP: mostly mundane but with some very big implications
WoD: we permanently kill one of the Burning Legion’s leaders!!!
Legion: we kill the OTHER Burning Legion leader and see Argus and KILL A TITAN
AND ALSO SARGERAS, THE MOST POWERFUL THING EVER
BofA: we start with boats and work our way up to Azshara, who has been built up for more than a decade as the most powerful sorcerer ever
Shadowlands: we’re dead and now we’re dropkicking the very laws of creation.
Like, I always ask, “how will Blizzard top this?” and they kind of swerve into something new. Sargeras should have been something that was like, the final boss of the entire game. But here we are with him dead in a cutscene. We went from that to beating up quilboar (and each other) and rescuing baby turtles.
Once we get into the Shadowlands, what else is there? We’re literally going to other planes of existence now. What “basic” adventurer stuff is there going to be there? Are we going to be collecting ghost bear butts for the afterlife’s sausage vendor?
I am still irritated at the cinematic because once AGAIN it was a Sylvanas cinematic. When will we get one without her? Geez. I am sick of her.
Also calling it right here, and right now. Sylvanas is going to betray this “Death Entity” and either take their place or take their power for her own, thus making her immortal and in the process stop whatever this “Death Entity” is doing to the Shadowlands. This will be Sylvanas “setting us free”, thus giving her a bullcrap redemption and she will never have to face the crimes she has committed.
This is actually a good thing. The base price is $40, which is cheaper than it’s ever been (not counting sales, of course). If you want to get the cheapest version, you just get that. If you want extra goodies, you buy those versions.
With all the other stuff they’ve done lately, this is actually consumer-friendly.