I just need a new cosmic map
If the diagram sparks joy and is visually conceptually cohesive I’ll be fine
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Go to YouTube and look up galactic mermaid, click on either the album song or the anime with the 3 drag queens
That’s how I feel
(Can’t post the link here for what will be apparent reasons)
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I’m just speechless. Reveal her motivations? You mean the ones you pulled out of your butts a few years back?!
The sheer audacity of it. Like they didn’t go and retcon Edge of Night. Even though Sylvanas died again in Silverpine and we were not privy to her first person perspective for that one. So it could’ve gone there.
Acting like this is some big mystery that’s been in the works for decades and not a sudden and jarring left turn used to justify this expansion is just so shamelessly dishonest I’m almost impressed.
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This is the theme of Shadowlands
Rejecting the narrative instead of accommodating to the narrative
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I called it when the book was announced.
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Are suggesting writers need Protection from the Editors(and I don’t mean the Spellchecker)? They railroad Writers as heavily as the Fans! Should they be abolished too?
We have Editors for a reason!
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/Misery
Now this self-appointed Editor(who forced the Writer to write the story she wanted) actually caused the Writer’s work to grow in the story not that she lived to witness it(due to the writer offing her in order to escape).
Editors bring growth and the main problem is when Writers attempt to claim protection from Editors thus stagnating their work!
With that said I would like to be a Shadow Editor to the Editors of various works of Fiction. Cartoons and Anime need Vision! New ways of blending old themes together so to speak!
I like you. But stop the copium, really.
I have no idea what you’re even trying to say or what that has to do with my post.
My point was pretty simple: Bwonsamdi as a character concept was much better in his original format and not before he was flanderized into what he is now, which sadly has happened to basically every major character in the story in the last expansion or three. The baffling thing is that the same team that wrote him in BfA also wrote him in Shadowlands. It’s not like there was a 10 year gap between his last appearance and this one.
A lot of this problem seems to stem from the fact that, with Ion seemingly flat out admitting it now, the writing takes into account fan expectation and reaction to everything they do. They aren’t interested in just having a narrative vision and doing it for good or ill.
They want us to actively participate in the writing through our reactions online.
Which is just an absolutely stupid idea for a thousand obvious reasons.
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This is an apt description of what took place.
Have a 
.
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“Why has she done the things she’s done? Well, it’s been in service of this larger plan, where she feels this balance between death and life is broken and she wants to remake that. The Jailer is her conduit for doing so, and thus she formed that partnership with him.” ©
-So, Jailor (just some small half titan of the Underworld) was just Sylvanas puppy, in her plan to rebuild entire cosmos…
People were joking that Blizzard slowly tries to rise Sylvanas on the GOD level. Well, those jokes are over.
Indeed! They lack Vision and rely on everyone else’s contradicting Visions which shows that they lack an Editor!
They need an Editor with Vision!
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants is no way to write a story!
Many Franchises lack Vision which causes them to fail!
Probably not everyone. Something about the character feels very off for me. But I have a hard time describing in words what exactly feeled fake about the charcter when I did the Nazmir story line.
He was spared, just like Denathrius, because the devs liked the voice actor’s performance iirc.
Topic aside, the interview about the fairytales book made me think the devs are more concerned about telling stories to each other and for each other. Which is a yet another addition to “using established IP to push their own story instead under the disguise for easier marketing”.
What is more funny, that according to one of latest interviews
Steve Danuser: We definitely try to learn from the lessons of the past, and get better at storytelling. So that’s been a focus this time: telling a very clear story about the afterlife, the characters that are there, the menace that the Jailer poses, and what Sylvanas’ role in this is.
So, it’s a “clear story” and
Once the update goes live next week, players will be able to see it for themselves. There are really satisfying answers that come to the fore when you play through that quest line and we get to see Tyrande have something of a resolution with that power.
they consider the whole “resolution” to the stories of Tyrande, night warrior, and night elves overall, “satisfying”.
© https://www.pcmag.com/news/world-of-warcraft-devs-talk-the-new-raid-and-mythic-plus-score-coming-to
Which is in line with the BfA
You did things for that faction, you fought that enemy, you held the line for them, defended your capital. All those things. That wouldn’t be something we would take away lightly. That’s part of the Warcraft DNA. But shaping what those factions mean in the world and how they interact with one another? That’s something this expansion really allows us to focus on and resolve in a way that will be satisfying for players on both sides.
© https://www.polygon.com/interviews/2018/8/17/17697560/world-of-warcraft-battle-for-azeroth-interview-blizzard-horde-alliance-wow
Which I guess we can see. Both how “not litely” the stuff is, with focus on follow up for the night elf / forsaken stories (/s); how satisfied the players are with how the story was handled and resolved in BfA.
(not quite offtop; till 5 min mark)
I fail to see how. The stories they tell are about what they want to tell. There is so much “who asked for this” going on, that I have a hard time they even considered writing for the audience of WoW.
I saw big changes in the story of some game “in progress”, like Hades and some serious ones in Baldur’s Gate 3.
But it requires a very special team and development methodology (and degree of cooperation in the team) to pull off telling a story “on the fly” like a dungeon master. I think on paper that sounds interesting to me, but IMO that would require exceptional execution to make it work.
When it comes to WoW, even if we assume that things that can be done for a medium sized team (150-200 people) could be “ported” to a bigger one, modern blizz is not the company that I would associate with “quality of execution” (except Shadowlands launch. It relied on sharding heavily, making even release feel empty-ish, but stable; and the art team is good usually).
gl hf
Because all they get is a cacophony of noise. Sometimes the noise is more positive than negative and sometimes the opposite.
So when they announce BfA and people seem to like the Troll interacting with Saurfang, Blizzard takes that as, “Make this into an actual character.”
When people react positively to a voice actor, Blizzard takes that as, “Expand this character’s role.”
When there was…discourse around Garrosh’s actions in Wrath and the player conflict over whether he was just battle horny or being strategically smart, Blizzard takes that as, “Run with his battle horniness and amp it up to a thousand.”
They can’t decipher any sophistication but they very clearly are changing things based on fan reception. But they are not competent enough to understand what the actual majority opinion is on something and so they option they’ve been going with is to just flanderize everything and turn every character up to 11.
I would argue the “Who asked for this” is far more about the gameplay stuff than the story stuff. Almost all the awful story changes are rooted in some change the developers have made and are essentially smirking at us and going, “Ehhh? EHHH?” trying to hit some kind of demand they believe the fanbase is making.
Obviously this isn’t true for 100% of the story changes. But for a lot of significant ones, it absolutely is.
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I think it COULD work in very specific situations as you say, but certainly not for one this big. And certainly not for a MMORPG. And certainly not with this company and these writers.
Funny how the interview mentioning Bwomsamdi’s expanded role mentions nothing about him changing in Morality…
I believe their idea of expanding Bwonsamdi’s role is to just make him a genuine ally of ours instead of a villain who we were forced to ally with out of necessity due to the circumstances.
They seem to have totally missed why a lot of people liked Bwonsamdi in the first place. That he was a devious trickster who clearly was just playing the Zandalari to steal more power for himself.
And only saw it as, “People like Bwonsamdi, let’s make him good.” He still retains some of that trickster status but they’ve just turned the moral dial from evil to good.
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Eh, I much prefer the version who’s clearly working an angle but is basically decent.
He’s a businessman, not a conman. Of course he had self interest in becoming the Zandalari’s chief deity. But now that he’s in that position he endeavors to do right by them to the best of his ability.
Reputation afterall is very important to merchants. If he never honored his end of the arrangement, no one in their right mind would bargain with him again.
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I am not going to pretend to be an expert. I am mostly introverted person. I do not have PR-related education in any form. My exposure is limited, but I occasionally spend my free time to sit on forums, twitter, reddit, discord, or youtube content sections for specific videos / themes touched.
After sinking 3-5 hours weekly on such things for about a year, I see that the themes of what people want are mostly abstract and rather consistent. To name a few:
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people want continuity and older lore to be respected and not retconned needlessly;
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I often see people wanting to see the aftermath of the events and more “depth” even if it means fewer story lines, rather than hopping from one to another and dropping them indefinitely.
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I frequently see skepticism about the idea of following NPCs as the main characters. Sentiment varies. Some want the player to be the main, some want the “world” and it’s exploration to be the main theme / “character”. But it could be summarized IMO as a wish for more attention to the player experience and things “making sense”, as well as the feel of adventure, rather than “what Jaina / Thrall had on breakfast last Thursday” or similar things.
I see glimpses of those things everywhere, and not sure if they can be really considered to be something limiting.
I’ll have a hard time finding the exact quote, but I’ve heard that they try to push the story initially, and then maybe tone down if necessary. Which might be “good” for marketing short term, to start with a big event. But people are used to a traditional narrative structure so this approach seems to be “failure by design”.
gl hf
I thought Bwonsamdi came on a little hard in BFA but I assume that’s because they wanted you to eventually hate him. But he had that “used car salesman” vibe you can appreciate from a distance.
His Ardenweald appearances feel…I dunno, a slacker in a Bwonsamdi skin suit, or something. I didn’t really like how subservient he seemed to be when dealing with the Winter Queen.
I’m obviously not a writer but during the moment when the WQ dismisses him, I would have added an emote line of her trying to suppress a smile afterward. I think that would help him lean into more of a “I hate that I like him” mood instead of cold contempt, without having to add any extra voiced lines.
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