No, Iâm talking about the âend to the faction warâ interest that spawned during BfA.
I mean, I think attitudes were mixed going into BfA. I heard a lot of âtired of the faction warâ comments, but also a few things like âthey have never done and expansion that was about the faction war.â Thanks to BfA, I think they have punted that interest.
Blizzard always gets a surge with a new expansion that trails off. The issue is a) if the surges get less and less and the low points get lower and lower.
There are hints, though only Blizzard knows for sure. When classic launched, apparently subscriptions tripled. But they were still lower than BfA launch. Having lost over 2/3 of their players midway through the expansions doesnât seem encouraging.
Since then subscriptions from people coming in to play because of Classic and COVID give Bliz some respite, profit wise. But COVID wonât last forever and Classic replaces the retail version, not expand it.
They failed because the last two expansions were supposed to be four, but got bits and pieces mashed together while keeping the same plot points and various arcs. I firmly believe that the initial plan was that Sylvanas would have been Warchief for at least 3.5 expansions, and a seemingly competent and heroic one for at least two of them besides, with a much slower buildup.
But instead of altering the arc to fit, which they probably couldnât anyway, they just moved parts around and stitched it back up best they could, then doubled down.
Possibly. But in WoW, everyone is doom to always have things they like die, destroyed or turned evil. In Mists we lost Theramore but I still consider it a good expansion.
There are a multitude of reasons. If we had just one it could be pinpointed and eliminated.
Fox did the same thing as Blizz with redoing an existing unpopular story thinking they could do better. (X-Men Last Stand/X-Men Dark Phoenix)
WB tried merging two different fandoms (Birds of Prey & Harley Quinn) with the same movie while removing the main core character from one half. (Batgirl/Oracle)
Terminator was trying to reboot the core premise (replace John Conner) but still try for nostalgia, a combination I donât want to know how was cooked up.
Charlieâs Angels tried removing the campy escapism from the story and then wondered why the fans of the campy escapism didnât show up for it.
Godzilla filmmakers still canât grasp the concept of getting the humans off the screen, especially for the final fight.
I am not even going to discuss Star Wars or Star Trek.
As others have said, and why Iâm very so disappointed in bfa I feel like I was mislead, a bait and switch. We were told morally grey but there was next to none of that.
I do think an ally v horde story can be done well. Faction v faction has the potential for some of the most exciting story telling. But the catch is it has to be handled with extreme care and tact for both sides.
Otherwise you end with the pr nightmare they have, horde were just henchmen this xpack and ally were incompetent fools. That leaves no one feeling good or enjoying the story.
I think they knew full well going into bfa what they were doing, just chose to ignore the feedback. Hence the misleading about the story at the start of bfa.
I dont think Iâve ever seen a dumber storyline in a game. Who the hell greenlit this lmao? what does NâZoth, a diamond guy, and a robot named mother have to do with a horde/alliance faction war? Thats the theme of this expansion right?
There is something fundamentally wrong in whatever culture blizzard has now. Are they afraid to criticize other devs ideas? None of this stuff makes any sense at all.
They have this dojo where they dont like any negativity gets in the way of their ideas, now, im not saying this is true but some guys on these forums believe what they meant was to bar any kind of criticism, making the entire thing an echo chamber hence we get ideas like these.
Given how the Faction War Theme-slash-Story went, it would have been better for us all if this had been a purely Old Gods expansion where the Burning of Teldrassil, Siege of Lorderan, and the Warfronts never existed and they spent all the time and energy shoring up NâZothâs story.
Thing there is the war was not even a war where both sides leaderships intended to win. Both sides were played as fools by Sylvanas and had a pointless conflict that gave Sylv and her new best Buddy the Jailer all the souls to eat they wanted.
The weird wishy washyness I think came down to that. BfA was pretty much 100% a setup expansion, so they used it to wrap up or just cut a bunch of loose ends they didnât want bothering them when they began their Shadowlands and beyond âgrand tour of the cosmology chartâ initiative.