I suppose that also might explain the odd comment about how we would “see the good side of the Horde” in the animations. I always figured they were referring to “Old Soldier” there, but it’s possible that the content of the Sylvanas video was different at the time.
Still not sure whether that’s what happened, but your theory is possible.
Not saying that Jellex’s theory isn’t possible, but we had the shot of Sylvanas standing in front of the burning Teldrassil all the way back at BlizzCon 2017. So that image, which is either taken from or near perfectly replicated in the the Sylvanas Warbringer, was already conceived of well before that point. So I’m not sure how different a possible alt-version of that cinematic would’ve been. Maybe she wouldn’t have given the order to torch the tree but she was planned to be there for it well before… I’d guess all of these interviews.
The picture of her standing in front of the tree could have been recycled - the whole random flashback to Arthas is probably what changed.
So I’m still poking at this, and I noticed a weird juxtaposition.
Here’s the by-now-infamous quote from Travis Day on April 5, 2018, talking to Invenglobal:
But here’s Travis Day talking to Blizzardwatch, also on April 5, 2018:
How can he make both of those statements on the same day? What does this mean for the state of the story at that time? The second one lines up very closely with what we actually got: Sylvanas (with help from some of her supporters) burned the tree, but parts of the Horde didn’t support her. But I don’t see any room with that story to say “Sylvanas is not evil” and that she is not acting in a “cruel, mustache-twirling evil way.”
Also, I remember there being discussion at the time about his little cheat of saying “You’ll come to the conclusion that Sylvanas burned the tree.” It seemed like a very deliberate hint that things wouldn’t be the way they appeared, especially since he preceded that by saying it would be “open to debate.” So this was part of what stoked the theories about anyone but Sylvanas being responsible, although as I recall, those theories had been going strong since Blizzcon.
One last interesting thing, in light of the discussion about a possible reworking of “Warbringers”: Why does he describe them as “two-and-a-half/three pieces”? Which one is the “half”?
Better make sure this topic stays alive and running. With a new expansion about to release, I’m sure we’ll have plenty of new material to add.
I just ran across this interview with Kevin Martens from September 12, 2018.
https://www.polygon.com/2018/9/12/17847356/battle-for-azeroth-story-factions-kul-tiras-zandalar
People have indeed gotten very mad at certain parts of the story, but Blizzard said that it sees this as a victory, as it sets out to tell its most ambitious set of stories yet.
“Having people feel strong emotions about something is the point of that faction alliance.” Kevin Martens, a designer on World of Warcraft , told Polygon. “With Legion , we had to work together against the more existential threat against the Legion and it’s great to do that once in a while. But the core of the game, that red versus blue content, it’s good to come back to that. For people to feel something about that, that’s special. That’s hard to do!”
Martens confirmed that more straight-up story conflict is on the way.
“The goal is to watch people have a visceral reaction, and care about what happen[s], and even argue with each other.”
Martens is clearly invested in the story himself; he seemed hardly able to restrain his excitement when he spoke to us about it.
“Here’s an example: Some players are mad about what Sylvanas did, and they’re represented in the game by people like Saurfang, who are saying, ‘This is BS. This is dishonorable.’ There’s a whole cinematic for that.
“Then there are people who are like, ‘No, this is war, they brought it on themselves! Anduin is a hypocrite who cares about peace when it’s convenient for him, and he can win.’”
As for characters who haven’t shown up yet, Martens admits that “we have to pick our battles.”
“Players will ask, ‘Shouldn’t so-and-so be involved in this?’ Yes,” he said. “But we can’t tell 85,000 stories — sometimes we have to tell 75,000.”
Battle for Azeroth wraps up some of the final stories left hanging from Warcraft 3 , and that means those characters get the stage. Martens was coy about future Horde versus Alliance plans, especially in how they relate to raids. “There will be more raids, more head to head […] and maybe some other stuff. I don’t want to say too much.”
“Our general approach of everything is to go too far, cross the line, and then pull it back before the game ships,” explained Martens. “I find it’s far too difficult to come up to the line of ‘too awesome’ slowly and then push forward. We find it works better to push too hard and then pull back from there.”
As for the impassioned arguments on social media? That might be just one of Blizzard’s best marketing tools right now. As Martens puts it, “If people are talking about it right now, and it’s passionate about it, you know it’s a good time to jump in and players are passionate about the game.”
Adding my own thoughts: Every time I see Blizzard devs describing the attitude of Horde players, I get a weird disconnect. “The Night Elves brought it on themselves”? That makes no sense at all. And where do the devs get the idea that Horde players think Anduin is a hypocrite who only wants peace when he’s winning? I feel like they tried to plant that idea themselves in the throne room scene with Sylvanas, and it seemed nonsensical then too.
ETA: Also, if you enjoy this thread, can I request that someone please post a response? The forum won’t allow me to make two posts in a row, even if they’re separated in time, so if I find a new article, I won’t be able to post it here unless someone else has responded in the meantime.
There you go
oh yea because this worked so well with teldrassil, it didnt irreprarably damaged the story for both factions.
riveting tale.
I am somewhat baffled by this as well. When saying “he can win”, do they mean on the battlefield or the conference table with peace talks?
Saying he wants peace when he can’t win (with war) would make sense, but that isn’t how Anduin operates.
If he said the Worgen instead of Night elves I could see it due to Stormheim but the Night Elves?
I know there was a large number of Worgen civilians there in Teldrassil but both them and Stormhiem were non-factors aside from Saurfang’s internal thoughts about Stormhiem.
Here is a frightening thought, if Teldrassil was them “pulling back across the line”, what was their “push too far”?
Might’ve involved whatever Rexxar’s line about Jaina was
I think teldrassil was their “push too hard”
I mean personally i was pushed to try ffxiv to get my fix of an mmo, i do not think you cant push your fanbase harder than that.
And that’s why Julia described it as a ‘frightening thought’- the implication that the story developers DIDN’T think Teldrassil was ‘too far’, and following such low moral standards* what WOULD classify as ‘too far’.
*not the moral standards of the developers themselves of course, but the moral standards they were setting for the characters they wrote.
We aren’t the only players discussing the lore. Different parts of the forums, and other websites, all have different views of the characters.
Someone should tell them that people should be getting upset because the story is emotionally investing, not because the writing is so bad our previous investment feels like it’s been defecated on, or because the plot holes are so blatant that even a blind man can see them, or because we can tell the creators no longer care about the thing we as fans are invested in.
There are plenty of reasons to be angry at the story right now, and very few of them should be viewed by Blizzard as a “victory” of their attempts at writing emotional manipulation.
You know what we lack. We lack the collective weaponized nerdism that fans of Star Wars and Marvel posses.
We should all start making YouTube videos dissecting Blizzards writing in excruciating detail and criticize every little thing we come across. There should be podcasts where we grill a particularly unfabourable character and compare them to a similar one from an infinitely better franchise. I’d watch that. I’ve seen many a video about “Last Jedi Bad” so I’m basically an expert writer now. I could help.
The ambien is kicking in I think I’m going to stop posting, good night.
Heh, I was just about to reply to Kerrah with Rian Johnson’s quote about how he’d rather make a movie that divides its audience into groups that both hate and love it than make a movie that everyone loves, or whatever hipsterish nonsense it was…
Oddly enough we should be able to be even more effective given the subscription status of the game. If you could organize Wow players for something other than a raid or battleground.
It’s like they don’t understand the difference between “I’m so upset that my favorite character died in a well-written and emotionally moving scene that advanced the story in a meaningful way” and “I’m so upset my favorite character died after randomly losing his mind and running into a wood chipper for no reason whatsoever.”
I do realize that, but I’ve poked around some of those other discussion places too, and I just wouldn’t say that “It’s the Night Elves’ own fault that Teldrassil got burned” is in any way the dominant opinion of even the pro-Sylvanas Horde players. That seems to be a fantasy made up by the devs.