I am really not willing to endure this idea that the Alliance and Horde can go back to the way things were before BfA where we can begrudgingly cooperate. There should be WAY too much tension right now. Tyrande being mean to the Horde PC does not cut it.
One major bloodbath between the Alliance and Horde from Wrath through MoP was bad enough. Two major bloodbaths and there’s no coming back from that. The memory of the Battle for Mount Hyjal is too long ago now and its memory tainted by the wars that followed.
Stick a fork in this notion that the Horde and Alliance can ever cooperate again. It doesn’t make sense at this point. And stop making us save each other’s leaders too because that’s just the ultimate insult.
I’m not saying we have to go back to war. But the idea they’re pushing that we’re just supposed to hug it out for the greater good is giving me an aneurysm.
The Alliance and Horde “begrudgingly cooperate” most of the time because it is quicker/easier for Blizzard to develop one narrative and set of quests than two.
So both factions will “work together” sharing the same NPCs, cities, zones, and quests for a time and split up when more time permits for two narratives or during a faction vs faction development cycle.
They’re also cooperating because they want Sylvanas gone just that badly.
It is frankly time to put her out to pasture. The Horde has a responsibility to do this because she was our leader, and it was because of her leadership that the Night Elf genocide transpired.
I do not care about her anymore. She is a victim of genocide herself and has crossed a line that she can not come back from.
That would be preferable for me yes, everything burning, we do a timeskip where we know nobody and start our careers again with uh… the fellowship and… the gang? yeah those two would be our new faction names.
Enemies coming together to take on an even bigger bad has always happened. It’s like a requirement for epic team ups. Comics, games, shows (The Flash’s Crisis on Infinite Earths episodes as an example) and even movies. We get a trailer for Godzilla VS King Kong on sunday. I’m willing to bet the first half of that move is Zilla V. Kong while the back half of it is the two of them teaming up to stop some bigger bad. My money is on Mecha Godzilla or Mecha King Ghidora.
Back to the topic, Blizzard loves doing this route. It’s basically been the go to story arc for most of this MMO’s life. Alliance and Horde hate each other right up until a world ending event comes into play. Deathwing, Sargeras, N’zoth you name it.
I’m sure there are many examples, but imagine playing as a Zandalari and being tasked with saving Jaina, the orchestrator of the attack on Zul’dazar that killed their king? I can, because that’s the reality we’re presented with in Shadowlands.
Jaina is a particularly annoying case because this character has a pattern of committing acts of aggression against the Horde like with the Purge of Dalaran, or the Battle of Dazar’alor and then having it be diminished or swept under the rug for “faction unity” storylines. At this point, Jaina has done enough against the Horde where she should not appear in neutral storylines.
I also dont want to save anyone that wears red but here i am, saving baine and thrall from the maw.
Boy am i having a swell time every time the main narrative crawls back fron the hellhole it dug itself, i hate my character is this entity that exist only for narrative convenience, talk about inconsistency.
Dude, I am as red as they come and I felt disgusting when I had to save their pathetic behinds -Baine is basically a plot device designed to chant praises over God King Blanduin and Jaina Tragicmoar while Thrall made his ultimate depiction as ugly green skinned Goldielocks -just as useless and childish as the fairy tale character-.
Necessity dictates cooperation. It’s not something done out of the joy of their hearts usually (for example, during the Burning Crusade, when you meet with the two at the mission table before the Dark Portal, they’ll immediately tell you that they don’t trust each other and that needs must be. They even tell you to go sneak into the other’s camp and read their orders. They’re only content with their presence when their orders seem calm enough.).
They might not like each other - and with good reason, given the history they share - but in the event of something like the Lich King, it’s either cooperation or extinction.
Which is an increasingly strained answer given everything that’s been done.
Like, you can go this route, but BC didn’t have a recently completed onscreen genocide for its prologue. Bad things happened, sure, but they didn’t put them onscreen and generally, you didn’t have the level of investment tied in that an MMO entails.
That changed with Teldrassil. I know that people don’t like to hear me say this, but however much the writers might try to move on from that, you can’t unring that bell. The problems that it created have to be resolved.
We’re still at this junction. There’s so much more that goes into the books (that even contradicts the game!) that doesn’t see time in game. Every now and then I look at WoW and scratch my head and wonder as to how so little commitment is actually put into the game and how little the employees are being paid, when a game that is comparatively younger is just better in almost every department.
The latter, however, that can be addressed by doing nothing.
It doesn’t have to be addressed.
Between the two armies obliterating each other and the Scourge that just showed up to annihilate these two armies that have nothing left to throw, it could be an apocalyptic situation for the world. The people who carried out Teldrassil are dead. The people who attacked the Undercity are dead. The people who invaded Drazal’alor are dead. The people who could possibly hold a grudge and want to break agreements to reignite a war are either dead or so few in number that they haven’t the means to partake in anything other than banditry.
100,000 odd people is very little, logistically speaking. Give or take how many is actually needed to attempt a siege of Orgrimmar. I’m just going with Battle of Vienna logistics here.
There has to be a gap in time where the next generation reaches adulthood and has to be trained. The resources to make arms, armor, siege engines, boats and more has to be paid for - and even if there’s just some ‘do it because we need it, payment comes later/never’ there’s still the physical resources to collect it.
That is a lot of time to say ‘hey, the last time we did this, it was disastrous and nearly broke us, do we want to do this again?’ and possibly answer ‘no, not really.’. It’s not a heat of a moment decision. It’s one that has a long time to be dwelled on.
Gladwell, when you bring up content in the books, I’m going to tell you that I don’t care and that most players don’t care. Putting something in a tie-in book accomplishes nowhere near the engagement or memorability as it does when it’s in the game, and when its happening in the most in-your-face-way possible to a community with investment in that part of the franchise.
And yes, it does have to be addressed - because regardless of how large that gap is, unless you are waiting for the players themselves to die off, those memories and impressions will continue to be there, so will the pain. These problems are not to be fixed for the sake of fictional people and pixels - they are for the real communities of people that you are asking to play the game.
Having a developer walk onstage and say “okay, so in this new expansion, a hundred years have passed” fixes very very little.
Okay, let me just walk this back then and say; we’re still at the Burning Crusade stage where very little context that should exist is not in the game. It’s not an ideal situation. We’re here, it’s not changing, they get paid peanuts and their passion is being exploited. They’re not going to do more than the bare minimum.
And no, it doesn’t have to be addressed, because any pain you take from this is you perceived as a person, not in a grand story context where this story takes place. Yes the story should be for the customer, but, they’ve proven they do not have the creativity capability to handle this that sates their customer base and anything they could do would be far more dangerous to the product than just letting it go unanswered. What you’re asking for requires an extreme amount of change in the company and Activision isn’t going to do anything other than tighten its stranglehold.
In the same measure, the team that tackles this does not write as though they were writing for customers. Why do you think characters like Med’an and Calia were created? It’s stuff they want to do. They don’t take criticism or feedback - at least, not from active subs. They only send questionnaires to unsubbed accounts (like during BFA, when it was dumping on the bed.).
If you personally feel that there’s something that needs addressing, get into PVP. Level Kyalin to 60, gear her, join an RBG team or do world PVP. Subtlety Rogue is doing great right now and the Alliance needs more participants. But don’t be shocked if the company is very shy about anything relating to BFA, because of how negatively it was received.
Or, if you really want to drive home what you want, gather as many people who feel as you do and unsub from the game. They will at some point send a questionnaire, you can get in contact with them and fill it out honestly. Be sure to have Skype installed, because they’ll actually call you to talk about it verbally if you click on the option. I think they do use Discord, i can’t confirm, you can probably ask them about it.
But they don’t really listen to us here. Not in any meaningful way, anyways. Try as I might to rage against the machine for the negative direction they’re taking the Forsaken and the game as a whole, and you in more or less the same pursuit, including Teldrassil as a plot point, we are yelling into the void and are easily ignored. Money talks, words walk.