Because Stonetalon’s resolution was the result of a communications error within Blizzard itself. It was Garrosh’s most shining example of “Noble Savage” style…and it wasn’t even intentional. Hell, even Blizzard has gone on record saying players should “ignore” Stonetalon in regards to Garrosh’s story.
Welcome to WoW. Where a beloved story beat happens and the Developers poke their heads in and say “No. Don’t enjoy this. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Are you joshing me. Is this real.
That is like… The single instance I always go to for a point of reference even knowing there was a miscommunication, and Blizzard doesn’t even consider it canon?
It sucks though, given that Stonetalon is basically the best questing zone to come out of Cataclysm, and definitely ages better than some other stuff like CSI: Westfall or Rambo Reference: The Zone.
If they had done all of it like Stonetalon it would have been great. Instead of Genocidal Racist Maniac Garrosh we had Honorable Expansion Out Of Necessity Garrosh I think that the whole game would have been better off for it. You know, the Garrosh who doesn’t necessarily want an all out war, but acknowledges that Thrall makes terrible real estate decisions and that in order to survive the Horde would have to expand, even knowing that it’d put them in direct conflict with other nations.
I think with that Garrosh, Blizzard could have continued their faction war with more plausible motivations and been able to write it in a way that didn’t make either side look like a bunch of giant toolbags.
this is the dumbest thing ive ever heard and i hate it
If I could post links I would, but it’s a matter of record, sadly.
Nobody at Blizzard actually came out and said it’s not canon. Just that the game involves soooo many people working on sooo many pieces simultaneously that sometimes miscommunications/mistakes occur and a character/quest says/does/shows something that isn’t 100% in step with what’s been portrayed before.
And at the time, there seemed to have been conflicting ideas about where Garrosh was going. Up to the point where they had multiple people working on multiple “versions” of him simultaneously.
Until they made the decision that he’d end up being a villain. But some more sympathetic moments still came out. So they chalked the whole thing up to a miscommunication.
Think of it like in Star Wars Ep V back. Where they were moving away from Luke/Leia romance of Ep IV and moving towards Luke/Leia as being force sensitive children of Vader in Ep VI and then -OOPS!- Nobody told the guy directing the scene where they kissed!
It’s still canon. Still awkward. But don’t expect the Skywalker siblings’ romantic interest in each other to ever be referenced or explored again.
For reference, excerpted out of an interview with Alex Afrasiabi, if anyone wants to know exactly what was said. Formatting was lost during copypasta but y’all are smart enough to figure out which parts are Alex.
"Cataclysm seemed like he was going in a different direction for a while there …
He was.
He was? Tell us about that – why he had that shift.
Miscommunication.
So Stonetalon …
Me.
You did Stonetalon?
I did Stonetalon.
I didn’t stick to that path with Garrosh. I didn’t – not everyone was on board. Not everyone got the memo as it were, as we were designing – and that was my fault. Because when you’re doing, when you’re trying – because I was actually trying to bring Garrosh around, and Stonetalon was going to be the first of that. Cataclysm was pretty crazy time for us.
You had so much to do.
We did quite a lot of work. So I feel like there was a little bit of miscommunication on my part that kind of led to Garrosh going down another, darker path. So there’s an interesting tidbit for you."
With how many moving pieces there are in the game development process, I’m honestly surprised anything gets made at all sometimes.
You’d think the team that works on story would all be in the same room usually, but apparently not.
That’s still (at the very least) several hundred people. Before you include the even larger number of third party people involved.
And as mentioned before, they’re working on everything simultaneously. Your own workload’s enough without keeping track of what hundreds of other people are doing at any given minute.
It is ultimately a matter of communication though, which is why the guy did admit that he got the wrong impression. But I don’t think it’s anything that would have been solved by simply having them all working in the same room. If that were even physically possible.
Wait until you find out what they did with the Vindicaar!
In Blizzard’s defense, the Draenei are established as being terrible drivers.
they landed on the orc’s planet
they had a prophet and knew the path of glory was going to be a thing
they knew what they signed up for
god I’d never even considered that
can we put a stop to this because it’s sounding an awful lot like victim blaming
we all make choices
Remember, Velen is not infinitely, perfectly prescient. Think of his vision about his son. It was ten thousand years (or more) prior to when it happened, and it was vague enough that he didn’t even know who it was supposed to be. If he had a vision of the path at all I could see him thinking “I don’t know when, where, or what this is about but I hope to the light that it’s, like, metaphorical or something.”
Narrator:
It was not metaphorical.
Alright, who took my spot and instigated?