I mean. We beat a big bad villain… few days after: “Hey look, bigger bad villain”
Then we almost fail to beat him, something happens to power us up then we beat the “Bigger bad villain”.
And then a “Even bigger bad Villan than before” appears. We almost fail to beat him, then something happens to empower us and we manage to beat him.
Repeat with bigger villains;
Now already beated a Cosmic Villain on a distant planet, after getting there thru a interdimensional portal inside a Spaceship, with our Alien friend. (Goku vs Freeza at Namek planet? hehe just a joke), not after going a time-travel to the past on WoD to beat the baddies we have beaten long before. Now we’re faceing a Multi-reality death being on a literal hell.
i mean, that pattern’s kinda gettin obvious, what’s next? we’re going to have a Crossover with other Blizzard’s games, team up with Overwatch heros to beat Diablo in hell cuz he posseded Sargeras soul?
Sorry about the jokes, but i think u guys get my point, everything is so big (thats what she said) and feels we are at the “Avenger: Infinity Wars” plot…
The reason this happens is because the writers opt for, literally, comic book style writing, or at least they have since Cataclysm. It’s the result of them having little to no solid foundations for worldbuilding, which means that storylines are wrapped up quickly, which means that they need to go to the next big thing and constantly make stuff up as they go instead of going back to draw on their base and their foundation… because there isn’t one.
In my opinion, ideally every race should have some sort of internal issue or problem in their homelands that they never truly overcome, that’s unique to them and allows for stories to be built from that base that are rooted in the inherent themes of that race itself.
As a long-time comic book reader, I shall help you out.
At this point in the plot of the WoW-Men, having beaten up Magneto, Mister Sinister, Dark Phoenix, the Juggernaut, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, teamed up with Magneto to beat Apocalypse, had a whole Schism that led to us beating Sublime, and now fight the team-up of Mystique and the Shadow King?
We end up founding our own island nation next expac and herbalism becomes the new engineering. For reasons.
Good news though: We get portals to literally everywhere!
Good. Dragon Ball stories with ridiculous power creep are great, and to anyone else who likes them: don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. The internet gets these bandwagon opinions (the latter Matrix movies are no good, the Star Wars prequels sucks, etc…) that people like to jump on because they think it will make them look cool to parrot those opinions, when in reality the general public overwhelmingly thinks the opposite, yet the internet won’t accept it because they’re insulated in their geeky echo chambers.
I hate power creep done poorly. I like that Shadowlands is making it plainly apparant that the light and void are not the biggest kids in the sandbox. But I don’t see why we can’t just fight normie wars on Azeroth, either.
Which was why MoP was refreshing for me. The major threats (the sha, Lei Shen, Y’shaarj) were part of the world building. Plus the catalyst for all of it was the AvH war (so actions = consequences) which flowed through the story naturally.
That said, it does feel weird that we defeat an Eternal One in the first tier of this expansion. Like Denathrius and CN should’ve been the penultimate raid tier, not the first. It is like BFA all over again where we have this major and powerful threat, but the next antagonist is but a shadow of them. In BFA we went from G’huun to Rastakhan / Jaina.
The next raid tier will either be a Drust themed raid where the Wild Hunt takes the fight to Thros to end the Drust once and for all or a Maldraxxus raid featuring Vyraz and Kel’thuzad (after his escape to the Maw) as the main villains. Either way, a traitor baron who stabbed his Margrave in the back and an Arch Lich of the Scourge, or some random Drust are nothing compared to Denathrius.
If some of the hints regarding the Dreadlords are as expansive as they seem to be, I doubt this is the last we’ll see of him at all. In fact, I’d be willing to bet there’s way more up his sleeve than what there appears to be.
The goal of the dreadlords seems to be to pit all the powers against each other then pick up the pieces. If Denathrius is in on this, his defeat is nothing more than, dare I say it… a setback.
I doubt losing was part of his plan. Denathrius is an egocentric character, he would never allow himself to “lose” even if it was part of his “plan”. In fact I think Denathrius and Azshara would get along. Plus like Azshara’s encounter, at first he treats it as a game however as the fight progresses he gets more and more frustrated and angry.
How many planet destroying super weapons have we blown up in Star Wars now?
How many times has Mario rescued the Princess?
How many times will Godzlla fight monsters and engage in property damage?
When your hit franchise starts lasting decades upon decades of regular installments, change while keeping things recognizable becomes hard. It becomes either a long string of arcs with regular retcons to maintain a psuedo-status quo. Or you reboot it every couple years with a new installment that’s basically an alternate universe, yet repeats many of the same story beats.
I think to some degree this happens because game play and raids go over lore for them and they don’t care how we get there.
So instead of engaging stories and enemies, even returning enemies we get a loot pinata every addon and that’s it.
World building was complete abandoned too, lore books to customs and the cultures of the different races aren’t a thing any longer. WoW is a roller coaster without dept.
WC II and WC III had so much more engaging stories in my view than WoW ever had. Yes WotLK had a good end to a great story, but the Scourge itself was kind of a joke in WoW.
I think the devs never managed to recreate the old magic and went with a simple formula. I have no idea how long I will be able to engage with the game in the future like it is.
Edit: Also the fact that they are are making rectons left and right and consider a consistent story basis a hindrance and a bad thing is insane to me and takes a lot of the fun I had with the universe away from me.