So, I haven’t followed the story too much this expansion save that the banshee queen burned a tree then went ape crap and even abandoned the horde, then we had to deal with Azshara, now N’zoth… blah blah…
But, the title of the expansion says Battle for Azeroth and was supposed to rekindle the fiery conflict between the two factions. But… aren’t we working together against a major threat to all creatures…again… to save the world…again…
Why was this called Battle for Azeroth… did I miss something?
Because the “Skirmish for Azeroth before allying against the old gods yet again” didn’t really have the same ring to it.
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It’s actually ambiguous. It started as a battle between two factions for control of azeroth but ended as a battle to save azeroth.
I’m pretty sure Magni says something like “the battle for azeroth has begun” when he hands you the Heart of Azeroth at the beginning of the expansion.
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The concept was originally the faction war but instead devolved into feminism.
It’s the direction most multimedia is going.
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They tried to bamboozle us into thinking it meant we were going to fight the other faction for Azeroth when in reality it was just like every single other expansion, where we team up together to fight for Azeroth.
Is it really bambozzling when they basically said as much at the Blizzcon where they announced the expansion? I remember them hinting that the title could mean more than one thing.
I just like to use the word bamboozle.
Really their “double meaning title” was just about as subtle as the whole “maybe the horde didn’t burn the tree! OoooOOOoo who knows!”
I’ll admit I never watched that. From my understanding it was to reunite the war between the two factions. But. I could be wrong… lol
Because blizzard thought for some reason a faction war would be popular.
It wasn’t.
Realizing this, they shifted narratives.
It went from a nuclear arms race to lord of the rings cthulhu being a punk weakling
No you didn’t miss anything. Blizzard advertised and presented a narrative theme that ended halfway through the expansion.
Then to fill the rest of the expansion time they switched to a second unrelated theme that had only a 3rd of the time to tell its story, and thus we got what we got with N’zoth and his ending.
Either a gross example of mismanagement, or they just don’t care that much about their story.
Great video. Explains what i’ve been preaching for a long time way better than I can personally articulate.
Yeah, the story just doesn’t really flow… It made no sense to me with the direction they went.
Did you quest at all in stormsong? The old god angle was there from the beginning of the expansion for anyone with 2 eyes. They did not suddenly switch stories in the middle of the expansion.
How many times do I have to argue that a b-plot of the expansion overtaking the original and main narrative plot of the expansion isn’t a good thing?
Yes the Naga and N’zoth were there in the secondary plot. That’s a good tool to tease the next story, not to end your narrative early, replace it and not give that b-plot the time or justice it deserved to be a story.
N’zoth and the Naga were horribly mismanaged and poorly utilized, this entire expansion was nothing more than setting up Sylvanas as an antagonist for the next expansion, and when that goal was finished they shoved their B-plot to the forefront.
BFA not only failed at being a faction story, it failed its secondary plot as well.
this. AND oh guess what. The Horde chief becomes a BBEG…again… The horde changes leaders more times than people do underwear…
I’ve played horde most of my wow career, only ever considered switching when void elves came out and the Horde lost yet another leader.
The naga/old gods was never the b plot of the expansion. If anything, the faction war was the b plot and contrived just to get us to kt/zandalar in so they could tell us the naga/old god story in the first place.
Maybe it was just me, but I thought all of this was obvious from the first hour or so of the expansion…
If the faction war wasn’t the main plot they wanted to tell, then they should not have advertised so heavily on this expansion being a faction war.
From the cinematic, to the advertisement, to Blizzards own words, they fed the idea this was their main theme. Now if N’zoth was suppose to be a twist villain, then they failed exceptionally at that was well.
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And look at the cover for the expansion. The art clearly shows a conflict between the two factions.
hey remember how wod also had an iron horde at one point?
i think blizzard thinks they can manage multiple storylines at once
I thought it was pretty apparent with the hints given in Legion that we would be facing some type of Old God threat imminently.
Was BFA marketing a total miss in advertising due to only focusing on the faction conflict? Yes.
Was BFA’s story a total miss due to the failure to properly weave the storylines together concurrently? Yeah, probably.
None of this changes the fact that it was hinted for most of the prior expansion as well as at BlizzCon that the title had dual meaning. If anything we could really describe the marketing blunders that followed as the beginning of the avalanche of errors surrounding BFA. But perhaps that’s because they were flying by the seat of their pants and couldn’t come up with a better way to market it in time. (Or, they just don’t know how to do it right anymore; always a possibility.)