Sure; a common opinion people have repeated is that the “Golden Age” of World of Warcraft was back circa Vanilla - Wrath of the Lich King, or even Cataclysm at the latest.
Of course, given that, you have to know what my follow-up line of inquiry will be. Using the age-old response, “people have been predicting the end of WoW since forever”:
The Burning Crusade: “Ok, well, we’ve seen the end of the game, Illidan’s gone. Vashj and Kael’thas are gone. Game over.”
Wrath of the Lich King: “Ok, we beat Arthas and the Scourge, now it’s the last expansion!”
Cataclysm: “Ok, well now that Deathwing is gone, this was the last expansion! World of Warcraft is over! This time for sure!”
etc.
Taking that into account, then:
To quote Thrall, “What’s different this time?”
Based on your response to Question 1, approximately when do you expect this to occur?
Because people have been saying WoW will end “eventually” for about a decade now.
You act like we’re some kind of monolith. There are as many opinions on this side as there is on yours. All we have are spread opinions, mine included. And that’s as good as it’s gonna get. Not to mention, it’s not like these discussions have an actual impact. We merely theorycraft and speculate on what is, what might be, and what could have been.
So, do you, yes you in particular, think it would be acceptable if the Horde offered a bit of restitution, along with some kind of aplogy, like Sylvanas head, and then we put the issue behind is?
And it’s tied to you, like a ball and chain. Fixing the Horde means fixing Teldrassil. It’s inescapeable, like a black hole.
If there is, it has never been brought up. It’s possible, of course, but it’s all speculation. Not to mention without that wall, Gilneas would almost certainly also have fallen to the Scourge, since it took both it and the Worgen to hold them off. The end result would just have been more scourge, and possibly more Forsaken down the line.
Generally if you see just a collage of tweets you can tell it’s manufactured outrage.
Anyone can be made to look awful in about 18 different ways if you take everything they’ve ever said and edit it into a bad take highlight reel with zero context.
We’ll have to disagree here. The Horde can, IMO, be built up in such a way that it doesn’t end up in a position where another BoT happens at their hands.
Not another, no. But that doesn’t make this one go away. And it won’t go away until it is dealt with. It will linger, like a chronic wound, not healing and not getting better. It already has for two years, and it has not gotten better with time. Not at all.
There’s Game Death in that the Game changes sufficiently such that it is unrecognizable from the prior order, an “Apocalypse” so to speak, and there’s Game Death in that the servers shut down.
WoW has already gone through multiple Apocalypse Deaths.
Vanilla through Wrath was the first WoW, ends with Cata prepatch
Cata through WoD was the second WoW, ends with Legion prepatch
Legion through Shadowlands is the third WoW, ends with Probably Lightlands prepatch
I figure this game has 2 more cycles left in it, or one more and they end the franchise while developing WoW 2 (time skip for fresh characters like between Warcraft 3 and Vanilla).
The game has been forced to change for the Zoomers (born post 2000).
Shadowlands + two cycles = 14 years, at least
By that point, Zoomers will be Old and Generation Alpha will be new players.
And WoW I do not believe will survive trying to capture Generation Alpha. WoW barely managed to round up Zoomers.
The Horde cannot be redeemed.
The writers took a loaded shotgun to the idea that the Horde can ever be a faction of heroes, blew its brains out, and danced away merrily going “LOL, AAAAAWSUUUM! We can fix this later! We are SOOO smrat!”
Cataclysm, and it’s restructuring of core gameplay elements to make it easier was a response to Millennials (Gen Y) beginning to take a larger and larger share of the playerbase.
The Cata Period™ (Cata through WoD) was to that end.
Zoomers (Gen Z) began entering the game en masse at the end of the Cata Period and the start of the Legion period.
So the game changed again, to suit the entertainment style of that generation.
But as we’ve seen, people who had joined in the prior order weren’t happy; Vanilla Era Players (Gen X, Early Y) have in meaningful amounts gone back to Classic Servers.
Same thing is happening now. We are at the end of the Legion Era, which was made for Early Zoomers and Late Millennials. Gen X and Early Millennials aren’t happy.
Etc and so on.
Marketing.
Theres a reason why Zandalari have a lot of Wakanda references after all, or why Shaw and Fynn were made gay (?) and bi (confirmed) respectively. Etc.
When before, the running gag was all blood elves were gay in the negative sense of the word.
Nothing will make this go away short of a full retcon. That’s the point.
Make Horde grovel at the feet of the Alliance for the BoT and it gets held over their head until the game ends. Horde players won’t be happy about that and I’m doubting it will actually make a difference for Alliance players as well. The Horde will always be the faction that burned an Alliance capital full of civilians.
Let’s assume they make the Horde as contrite and repentant as you want. How does that make people want to play the Horde? How does that build Horde pride?
That’s not a very compelling argument to someone who fell when beating their fists against that wall begging to be let in…especially when you consider how undeath apparently magnifies negative feelings like bitterness and desire for revenge.
Dude the Forsaken army you work with doesn’t even know the Night Elves were there. The Alliance turning up comes as a complete shock. You’re wholly unprepared and are immediately overwhelmed. So I don’t think the lines of communication are great.
I’d argue doing right by your wrongs is character growth, but that is merely my opinion of it. I personally would be more inclined to play Horde characters if the Horde atoned for that kind of deed. But again, that’s just me. I have no idea if it applies to anyone else, anywhere.
Beyond that, i’m not at all opposed to creating Horde pride in other ways. As long as it doesn’t involve Attacking the Alliance again, of course.
That doesn’t mean they didn’t know about the invasion of Gilneas. I can’t imagine it would be easy to hide such a massive operation from anyone, especially commanders. Keep in mind the Worgens attack the Forsaken after Gilneas was attacked and they were forced to flee. I just find it hard to believe the Forsaken chain of command wouldn’t know why they were attacked by the Worgen. And if they knew, then they knew that they were in the wrong in the first place, unless they truly are some evil bastards.
I’m sure they’re aware of the invasion they are being forced to conduct against their desires and better judgment because the Horde is a dictatorship.
But clearly nobody knows much about what went on there. You’re certainly given no context.
Best I can figure Slyvanas ordered the big Blight bomb to be dropped because this war was already getting all quagmire on her and that’ll certainly shut Garrosh up. No idea if she changed her mind or if her order was thwarted, because when you get to Gilneas it hasn’t been Blighted.
As for enslaving Gilneans - zero clue. Seems like a bad idea that’ll only inspire insurrection in the area you’re trying to occupy. Maybe the need for stone was just that pressing or maybe they thought the juxtaposition between their tophat finery and this yeoman’s task was funny, and it’d make for a killer tiktok gag or something. I don’t know as we don’t get to play that part.
Just as I also don’t know why the Worgen turned all those humans just to sacrifice them as a diversion. Seems pretty pointlessly cruel and wasteful but as none of that’s playable on the Worgen side, maybe Ivar Bloodfang hates Hillsbraders and thought it’d be funny.
I don’t see too many zoomers interested in this but why would they be? Until the SL pre, pre patch this game was outright hostile to new comers. Seriously have you tried to introduce this to someone who’s never played Warcraft before? Because the early Cata quests are just dumping important names and places on you in a way that’s equal parts exhausting and confusing if you’re new to this.
And you couldn’t go experience the story in any coherent way to catch up with any of this. It was just a time traveling nightmare where you’ll interact with three different warchiefs with zero explanation.
And a continued problem is the economy. Because if you don’t have a friend who can hand you gold I hope you want to drop $20 on a token. Because good luck making the tens of thousands of gold needed to participate in the in game economy from starter quests.
And that’s if you don’t have to give them The Talk about what race they want to play, and why half of the selections means you won’t get to play with the person who’s trying to get you into the game unless they make a new character too.
Can confirm, I was given this game in Cata (or well, last two months of wrath) for my birthday, and I was literally given “classes” on WoW’s history with my friends giving me tours of Azeroth on the two-people mounts, including running instances, classes were every weekend for six months lmao
Yeah the WoW economy’s inflation during the Cata Era was insane. Went from steady to exponential.
Part of it is people playing the game in order to maximize accumulation of Gold. They don’t do PVE, they don’t do PVP, they don’t RP, they just play the markets.
