Hard to say. Every company is going to be cagey about their abject failures. We’ve gotten some tea about how bad things are over there from ex employees Blizzard did dirty but I don’t think disgruntled people on Twitter are the most reliable source.
So someone will probably have to take their time to piece together what info we have to get a clear picture on how this all went wrong. Personally I suspect they knew this was going to be a problem child from day one. Azerite Armor got rolled out very late in the PTR and I think they knew it was a bad idea that wasn’t going to work. But deadlines are deadlines. Oh for the days when Blizz would just take however long they needed.
Do you unironically lack the ability to differentiate that Daelin was speaking to an orc about orcish blood, while it was a forsaken blood elf who burned the tree whilst an orc lamented it?
You make a good point, and I’d be more inclined to agree if mechanics didn’t force characters down very controversial paths. Rebels had to play along with Sylvanas early on to start the war campaign, and loyalists had to “just play along” to finish it.
The game tried to cut this weird path that allowed for “roleplay” while still cleaving to this very narrow, confining story that didn’t actually allow players to express their rp in any satisfying way. The PC was transparently a narrative pov device dressed up (badly) like a character.
So like, no matter what they’re going to give us an unchangeable path. I’m glad they offered me the choice to flip Sylvanas off. I wish they had done it sooner, during the War of Thorns.
Sure, but linked lists, binary trees, and a road map of downtown Beijing are different types of paths.
A linked list that has “serve the Dark Lady” and “elope with an Alliance broad” as adjacent nodes is doing something wrong. That scheisse either needs to be split into separate branches on a tree, or one of those nodes needs to be deleted.
What does that have to do with my post? I would have thought you of all people would have hated the War of Thorns and Brennadam. Orcs were portrayed as reveling in killing Kul Tiran civilians.
While this is true that mechanically gameplay wise the choice was somewhat of an illusion, we have to take into account that it was imo somewhat unprecedented in WoWs history. I mean, you never got a choice to side with Garrosh, as many would point out. Most quest lines have been pretty linear, without meaningful choices. I think this is also where the MMO part of MMORPG comes into play. Since it’s not a single player game, ultimately the larger plot points have to end the same for every one. Like, we can accept N’zoths gift, but tentacle guy is dying either way. ( Hell, even in single player games, like Fable, you can choose to be good or evil, but you still gonna be beating the last boss either way.)
Of course I am a little more biased because my side was the more “canon” one. When I did the quests on my blood elf I was immediately like “Help daddy Saurfang? Sign me the hell up.” But still, compared to the Alliance side it was like, yes, you have 0 reason to be against the war unless you are RPing as a legitimate Horde spy, since your side is the one being attacked. You also have 0 choice except to help Saurfang, Baine, etc, cause that is Anduins plan. There just wasn’t as much freedom to build your own narrative without really going outside the box.
At the end of the day, these things don’t both me as much though since I almost always make up my own stories and personalities for my characters in every single game I play, regardless of whether mechanically I have a plethora of choices or not.
That’s true, but Brannandam was only for Alliance players. Ultimately I can see his point that in the Hordes story, the Orc is the one who ends up calling out Sylvanas (I mean we can say it’s a bad story or whatever but yeah.)
I wish I saw it that way but I just think BfA crapped all over Thrall’s Horde and how the orcs were under him. I still love Saurfang because of everything before BfA. But I think BfA did his character a huge disservice on multiple fronts.
