Ground Level Threat Ideas

Lore Story Forum
21

This does make me think - These events in particular happen in that order because the bombing is done by the Alliance PC, so it being a PvE questchain means that the Horde PC can only come in afterward because the two players can’t meet (without forcing players to queue for their PvE story questchain so that an Alliance and Horde player get matched up, then have a PvP point of failure in the middle of the questchain, and all the chaos that would entail).

I absolutely love getting to see two sides of an intertwined story, so I’d rather keep these events (where the PC canonically learns about what the other side’s PC did in their questing) than have entirely separate stories that never impact each other.

But, then I thought, why does the story not have a few NPCs who act as PvE stand-ins for the ‘adventurer’ role? Something like Nazgrim and Taylor’s squads (Wow, I keep referencing these guys everywhere), where one side’s PC works with them, and then the other side’s PC can recognize the NPCs and put some faces to the other PC’s actions even as that PC remains an interchangeable stand-in for all player options.

It’s slightly different from the existing storyline NPCs (like both PCs encountering Dreven in that chain, or Horde working with Talanji while the Alliance players later eavesdrop on her discussing her plans) in that these ‘adventurer’ NPCs are explicitly not (only) tied to the current story, but like PCs, exist over time across multiple stories and allow for longer-running rivalries and/or other emotional ties. (I’d bet that Amber Kearnen would not have gotten the reaction she did if she was in only a single expansion’s questline, even if they had made her a bigger player in that one questline. Repeat appearances and familiarity are valuable in a story like this.)

It would give a canon face (or set of faces) for each side’s PC to shake their fist at whenever one of their plans is foiled by the other factions’ operatives (aka the other faction’s PC), and therefore allow for more story interactions with each player’s actions, as there’s an NPC that can serve as a stand-in for elements that have to be left vague for the actual PC (race, motivation, personal consequences, etc).

I think there are many characters who could work for this kind of role - ideally, I’d like to have 1-3 ‘adventurers’ per playable race, who can sub in and/or team up depending on which fit the current story the best, and help represent the non-major-character aspects of their playable race. Off the top of my head, some suitable characters [or potential characters] would be:
-Alliance-
Gnomes: Kelsey Steelspark
Night elves: Thisalee Crow, [make up some new Sentinel/Huntress/PotM character to be the distant, vicious, competent WC3 archetype that people want to see in action - and as the ‘adventurer’ working with the PC, they can have more successes than most NPCs can]
Humans: [make a wandering Brotherhood of the Horse hero], [make another SI:7 ground-level agent - I’d love for this to be a young member of the Trias family who just got into the business]
Dwarves: [make a mortar team for ultimate explosive fun and great banter - like the team in Dun Morogh, but I can’t remember their names off the top of my head]
Draenei: [make a non-Broken shaman character who is one of Nobundo’s apprentices]
Worgen: Crowley, Ivar Bloodfang, Tess and/or Lorna for the non-worgen Gilnean side
Tushui: Jojo Ironbrow, Aysa sorta fits, though she may be too major for the adventurer role
Lightforged: Enaara, T’paartos!
Dark Iron: Thaelin Darkanvil
Void Elf: Umbric might be low-level enough, but otherwise it would be fun to have a spooky shadow priest or rogue to fit the archetype
Kul Tiran: Flynn is a quintessential adventurer already, Brother Pike (or make a new Tidesage character using the Kul Tiran body)
Mechagnome: [not sure about characters here - unfortunately, they’re not my cup of tea]
-Horde-
Orc: Rexxar, [make a wandering Blademaster character], [have a wolf rider who represents the average Orgrimmar citizen’s opinions]
Tauren: Aponi Brightmane, Tahu Sagewind, Jevan Grimtotem
Blood elf: Astalor Bloodsworn (either as a Blood Mage, or make a new Blood Mage character), Rommath and Halduron are a bit too high-level for this role but maaaaybe could work to get some more exposure
Forsaken: Calder Gray, Kiryn (and maybe another Deathstalker, since I can’t remember if she is one or not), Belmont would work great as a recurring rival for the Alliance even if he has a more important role
Troll: Vanira, one of the Shadow Hunter characters whose names escape me right now
Goblin: Sassy Hardwrench, the other starter zone characters
Huojin: Ji might be low-level enough and it’s fun to have him punch dinosaurs, so…
Nightbourne: Valtrois
Vulpera: Nisha
Highmountain: Lasan
Mag’har: Kaz the Shrieker
Zandalari: High Prelate Rata (or make a lower-level prelate character)

4 Likes
22

This is almost exactly how I feel about WoW’s narrative direction a lot of the time. I feel like I get this disconnect when talking about BfA with folks, because starting off with the Alliance quests was some of the best writing in WoW if you ask me. You were brought down from the lauded hero of Azeroth to an untrusted outsider, escorting what people thought was a high treasonous princess, and not only did YOU fight to reuinite all the kingdoms, it culminated in you coming in at the 11th hour to save Jaina, help her resolve her trauma, climatically finish things in Siege of Boralus where she saves EVERYONE in turn to redeem everything.

Pride of Kil Tiras, man. That stuff was GOLDEN.

But I agree that more base-level threats are great, because it helps makes the big stuff feel gratifying. I absolutely ADORED Legion, but there was loads of smaller issues we had to resolve to build up to the big stuff. So long as there’s a proper escalation, I feel dealing with cosmic threats is fine, but there’s a drama to fighting fellow mortals that I absolutely love.

If I were the narrative director, I would have a devious human rogue playing politics with the noble council of Stormwind to create a more jingoistic state, but with the knowledge of what threats exist out there, be constantly thinking of venues to exploit. Having a genuinely morally grey character who helps their own faction while at the cost of others due to their own moral calculus is a great start, but I feel the destination has to work too when you have a focal villain being the source of conflict. I kind of want the writers to create a character we get a couple expansions with before they make them our BBGE. It felt like they were going that way with Nanathnos and Sylvanas (for better or worse, bleh), but I feel we have a lot of cool characters we could make with something like this.

1 Like
23

I think that Blizzard can tell flashy stories, but so far it’s been bad when they try to go cosmic. The Burning Legion was simple; army of demons trying to destroy everything, so that’s easy to expand on keeping to that core idea. But when the writing reached for complexity, it pulled back, created plot holes and ignored important facts of complex issues for writers’ agendas (Elune from BfA onward, Yrel’s Lightbound and the Shadowlands come to mind).

2 Likes
24

Yeah, the Yrel twist with the Mah’gar story line was a bit of a WTF moment when it happened. I’m not sure what could remedy this outside of having the director being adamant about what character motivations are going forward, but a lot of the time, when something like that does happen, we get a character butchered (RIP Sylvanas). I’m not sure what the solution would be tbh.

1 Like
25

Love the idea but I think instead of some of these more well known big characters, take a bunch of the introduced island expedition characters for these roles. They were already introduced, have no back story, already kinda serve as your adventurer group counter part, and anyone who played BFA would immediately recognize at least some of them.

Its a lesser point but I also don’t want the player implied to be equal to Belmont, Halduron, Rommath, Rexxar, Crowley, Umbric, ect. All these fairly important, theoretically very strong, and primary characters should retain their own sense of individualism apart from it, even if they’ve been ignored for way too long. Some of those like T’paartos, Thaelin, Sassy, would work great though.

26

The most bewildering aspect of BFA has to be how it actively encouraged you to see both sides of the story with achievements and even a mount reward.

But if you do that the story makes even less sense.

Like the San’Layn never even come up on the Horde storyline. Which is actively infuriating as they would’ve been perfect as Sylvanas’s personal flying monkies. Especially in the story where you rescue Derek.

That would’ve been such a cool reveal that’d show just how far gone Sylvanas really is if she’s working with the damned Scourge.

Instead though the Forsaken are just A Okay with flagrantly violating the only real taboo their society has.

Seriously she vanishes their newly formed government, gets their homes destroyed, marches them to battle in Darkshore of all places, leaves them to beg on the streets of Orgrimmar and then blatantly commits the highest crime in their society for which the punishment is True Death.

And they only realize she might not have their best interest in mind when she rage quits after not getting a Flawless Victory in a duel outside Org.

Which gets funnier the more you think about it as sans Banner Bae everybody else was entirely out of ear shot. It’s not like she was on a mic or anything. I want the scene where the flag carrier has to awkwardly explain to everyone the wars off because Sylvanas said the Horde is stinky.

3 Likes
27

I’m not sure how working with the San’layn is in any way relates to “working with the damned scourge.” The “Scourge” as of BFA is held in a state of inactivity by Bolvar. The San’layn are independent operators, which is literally what the Forsaken are as well.

Of all of the many, many stupid crimes that BfA put on Sylvanas’s name, this is not one of them.

1 Like
28

In Wrath they come off as free willed willing Scourge collaborators. Not every Scourge is enslaved, places like Scholomance are full of very willing participants. In Vengance Landing they try to convince the Forsaken to rejoin the Scourge then murder a bunch of them when that goes how you’d expect.

I feel like that sort of thing wouldn’t be easily forgotten or forgiven by the Forsaken.

29

Hmm, might be worth a short series of zone quests that lead to a ‘haunted mansion’ dungeon with a mad wizard/warlock boss summoning weird abstract creatures. My mind immediately cast this as something taking place in a revamped Stormwind/Elwynn Forest/Duskwood- maybe making use of the Tower of Azora.

The psychiatrist looked up, and up, and up, at the gargantuan Chaise Longue Alextrazsa the Dragonqueen had draped herself over. “Um, you could also turn into your elvish form and lay down on a smaller couch that could fit easily into my office…”

Alex wriggled around, stretching and flexing her various limbs. “Naw. Can’t get properly comfortable in enclosed spaces.”

normally that IS the case, but of DF I’ve only played a little bit on the ‘free weekends’, but I actually enjoyed the first zone where we talk a bunch to Alex and get to meet the first Big Bad, and the potential conflict about the black Dragonflight leadership right away, but the next zone, while kinda pretty, did nothing whatsoever for me. It was just one instance of “Who are these people and why should care anything about them?” after another. It felt like a giant zone of complete unimportance.

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30

We know Sylvanas’ story in WoW was the product of a tug-of-war between a simp who adored her and a scumbag who hated her. I think the lore elements to salvage that are already there. Make Yrel’s groups’ actions a reprisal for the Iron Horde, not the plot-hole-laden “MuH FanAtIciSM” trash we got.

2 Likes
31

It’s stuff like that that makes me wonder why the game director didn’t step in. Maybe they have a rule of narrative directors having their own thing going on, but that sounds like a producer’s nightmare. I’m told it was similar for Garrosh where some wanted him to be cartoonishly villainous, and another wanted him more morally grey. I can see it in the Cata quests.

2 Likes
33

Yeah, the Garrosh thing I had heard before. Honestly, I would’ve been fine seeing him parallel a journey like Thrall’s with having a theme more in lines with the ‘Sins of Father’ kind of thing, realizing he’s had bloodlust that led to an absolute genocide, and atoning for that. When stories like that are done well, that stuff is my JAM.

1 Like
34

i would prefere local threats instead of global threats.

SO for example

a voidcult discovered from the void elves and fighting each other
follower of Mueh’zella try to kill certain follower of bwonsamdi to capture enough power to release mueh’zella
the plantpeople try to regain territory in southern barren…and threaten the integrity of the horde. Such things.

1 Like
35

From what I remember reading, Garrosh’s original concept was a joint effort between Metzen and Afrasiabi, as a way of trying to reuse the Hellscream name but in a more positive way as a horde hero character. I guess it was supposed to be a slow-burn arc of his (kinda like how Anduin’s spent several expansions worth of development too).

It’d line up with Metzen advertising Garrosh as the new horde warchief in Cata and promising that he’d grow into the role as a character people liked, if they just gave him a chance. But none of the other writers were on-board with it and wrote him as they saw him - a violent, hotheaded moron, leaving his Stonetalon depiction as the odd man out. And players saw this inconsistency (with the other depictions being more prominent) and hated him even more.

Then MoP happened and welp.

5 Likes
36

That’s so upsetting to me, honestly. I would’ve loved nothing more than to have that ‘You left me to pick up your pieces line’ in WoD to be met with sympathy, because Thrall…kind of did. I wouldn’t have wanted Thrall to be struck down, but I would’ve been down to see Garrosh break down into a pathetic mess. Hell, I think other characters seeing him like that (Jaina especially), would’ve been interesting as hell.

The salt in the wounds was what happened to Garrosh in SL. Him and Arthas deserved better.

5 Likes