The structure of the story has us launching into the Maw to sabotage the Jailer before having to flee his terrible wrath.
Given the appearance of the Jailer, this seems to suggest we are basically pulling pranks on an old dude and running before he calls the cops.
I’m just shocked, and disappointed, at the supposed appearance of the Jailer… Really? He’s just an old white dude with a long beard? So basically just a “human” Velen?
They couldn’t come up with anything more original and unique? I’m just disappointed…
you expect originality out of the people who just copy pasted warhammer and changed a few names?
Being a little serious here, but he looks a lot like a darker version of Odyn than anything else.
Odyn gave up his eye to a creature in the Shadowlands for knowledge … who is to say that that eye wasn’t used as the foundation for something else, something more grim, such as copying the Titan Watchers themselves?
I disagree but here’s why
the Shadowlands is older than the Titans, has kyrians before val’kyr were cool, and the jailor looks like a titan
To me, I feel as if Odyn sacrificed his eye and that’s it, just like OG Odin. Now, the kyrians and that knowledge could’ve been used to control what Odyn did, which might explain some of Odyn’s actions
The Jailor and the Arbiter might be members of the Titan race, and might explain better the origins of the Titans. Spirit (anima) feeds a World Soul, after all
I wasn’t expecting anything and yet I am still disappointed.
Here’d be a cool twist - the Jailer, the power behind the throne and motivation for Sylvanas going screaming evil, is Medivh. Turns out even without Sargeras’ corruptive influence, the guy is nuttier then a can of Planters Peanuts and was orchestrating things to ensure the total, absolute destruction of the Horde - what he feels is his greatest error. An error that Sylvanas Windrunner - late Ranger-General of Silvermoon during the Second War - agrees with him about. She saw how callously Garrosh used up her Forsaken. How quickly the sum total of the Horde turned on Garrosh. How when Vol’jin was wounded, a jockeying for position of replacement. So when Vol’jin called her forward and told her to “Step out of the shadows” - a prearranged code phrase by which Medivh was telling Sylvanas Operation: The Orcs Are A Mistake is a go - she began to sabotage the Horde from within.
“But that betrays her own people!” I hear you cry. To which I respond to Sylvanas’ own catchphrase for over a decade: “What are we, if not slaves to this torment?”
She’s always ever hated her form and undeath in general. Her utilization of Forsaken like Godfrey and the power of the Val’kyr was always to protect herself, seeing the Horde as a body as a greater threat then the Forsaken as a group. Now, with Medivh’s aid, she can tackle two birds with one stone.
Throw some spice on that storyline and have the Blood Elf Illidari actually side with Sylvanas. The Forsaken represent the last vestiges of Legion magic on Azeroth. The Silver Hand is also completely onboard, with the Argent Crusade being a bit more “Save the Forsaken” bent and the Blood Knights obviously siding with the rotting corpse of Lordaeron.
Oops. I just brainstormed in five minutes and infinitely better expansion storyline then Shadowlands is going to end up being. I gotta stop doing that.
RThey can always retcon or, even better, retcon it and lie saying it was always that way.
Also I like think the Jailer does have the eye, but it’s not used how you think it is.
“Where is the eye, Jailer, we demand to see it!”
“You sure? Well all right…”
*turns around, reaches for the floor, lifts tunic
i don’t see how this is any better than what they have but
Go off, I guess
I think it’d be really shallow if this is 4d chess to make the horde the center of another expansion
I’ll admit to not having done the Hordeside content for BfA, but it feels more like the last time the Horde were the center of an expansion was Warlords of Draenor. Legion was dominated by Alliance characters, and even BfA…Saurfang only gets to where he is because Anduin decides to be Saurfang’s…???
What’s the vernacular for “Sugar Daddy” but when the once providing said sugar is the younger party?
Letting out Saurfang is pretty much the only thing that Anduin does for the entire expansion, aside from getting a nasty case of sadface during the Dazar’alor raid and running back home. So I think Saurfang still wins that one.
“Money Bunny”
This is not the thread for it, obviously, but at this point, it really is just the story that has me so frustrated. I like a lot of what they presented gameplay and mechanics wise, and it got me a bit excited.
I don’t even care that the Jailer, on the face of it, seems boring. It’s not more, bland, obnoxious, Yellow vs. Purple Warcraft cosmology, at least. I’m annoyed that somehow they don’t see the obvious–watching Sylvanas roflstomp over everything else people find cool in the Warcraft universe is not enjoyable.
I don’t care that there might be explanations for it in the story. I don’t care if they’ve been intricately setting this up since before Warcraft existed. Blizzard has complete control over the story, anyway–they can just make up reasons it happened that way as they go. It doesn’t make the decision to write a story like that less bad, less annoying, less nails-on-chalkboard revolting.
That’s something that frustrates me when I talk about the story in other places. People get suddenly coherentist about stories for no good reason, as if all a story ever needs to do is make internal sense for it to be good. Leave alone the rightly founded allegations that Sylvanas’ sudden rise to power and abrupt change of heart might not make internal sense in several places–even if it did, her character is boring, night elves are made, yet again, more boring and useless as a consequence, when they shouldn’t be, Bolvar is made more boring and useless as a consequence, Baine and Lore’themar (and by extension, the races and cultures they represent) continue to be boring and useless. The list goes on.
These are characters people like, and that people expect and hope to be entertaining. To the extent you make them less so, you make your story worse, even if it makes sense. Which, it doesn’t.
But that just frustrates me about having this conversation. You start to have it, and people give responses like, “Well, but it makes sense in the story, given X, Y, and Z…”
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make it good. Lots of stories are coherent but still bad.
The entire thrust of Battle for Azeroth was about the soul and identity of the Horde. Again. That the Alliance was violently coerced into participating in. Again.
Even Jaina barely had anything to actually contribute to the “main” story of this expansion. You know, the one that we spent all of Kul Tiras taking through her personal arc so that she could give us more boats? The star of that really awesome trailer everyone loved?
Azshara blows up those boats, and then she has one conversation with Thrall.
(though in fairness to the Horde, the exact same thing could be said about Talanji who also gets 100% sidelined for Saurfang)
Makes me wonder if they cut a lot of content similar to WoD and were just a lot more secretive of it.
It definitely feels like it, but I’m not sure if I can see a way that those threads would have tied together, short of the entire Sylvanas civil war half of the expansion being some last minute course correction once burning down Teldrassil sparked such a vocal reaction right out of the gate.
That would make sense in theory at least with how disconnected it was (and how they tried to hype Sylvanas up as inspirational with that first cinematic), but even I can’t believe that they would’ve had enough time to change the whole story like that on a dime.
Feels like they wrote a book and we’re on Chapter 10, then suddenly on Chapter 17. There’s just zero build up and plots just died.
So I just want to complain about this, but I really hate how tribal the Story Forum has become. It’s so full of RP now and hardly constructive anymore. I’m also seeing a lot of posters that I use to respect for their opinions and perspectives on things jump on the faction hatred train as well. But it’s not faction hatred, it’s faction PLAYER hatred.
This expansion has just blown. I didn’t think the community could get as nonconstructive like it did back in MoP, but fookin’ hell BFA has just pushed the envelope.
Faction wars aren’t fun when people are literally attacking people for being people on a faction. I mean, they aren’t fun in general… but it’s not even playful banter anymore. It’s flippin’ hatred. It’s gone extreme and it’s just an absolute turn off.
Non-WoW related crankiness ahead…
If you hear any report about how strong the economy is or the like…don’t believe a word of it. I work for one of the top retailers in the world - my store is #3 in our Region in terms of sales (To give the break down, you have local, market, region, and of course nation in terms of sales tracking).
We are successful. My area is wildly successful. My average weekly sales figures are $80k. To clarify that’s $80k a week from one single area in the store proper, not $80k for the store as a whole. That gives you an idea of how much money the store as a whole pulls in on weekly average.
The day before Thanksgiving we were all pulled from our duties for an emergency meeting, in which we were informed the company - in an effort to reduce spending - is proceeding to slash hours across the board. This isn’t really anything new, but generally the hour reduction happens after the Holidays, during the lean months not leading into the busiest season of the year. And even then, the reduction was normally a couple hours a week at most.
Not this time around. Assuming what I was cut was base standard across the board (It isn’t, as I know several people in positions under mine who have been cut entire days), in my store alone just for next week we’ve given up over 1,200 man hours. And we’re one store - taken the company as a whole that’s over 5 MILLION hours cut in a week. At the very beginning of the Christmas Holiday.
And we’re expected to maintain the high standards of service and sales during this process. Like literally HOW?!
Hasn’t it always been like that though? I remember it being an absolute warzone years ago.
If it makes you feel any better, the stock market keeps setting record highs this year! 