What would be the point of nuking Dinosaur Jungleland?
I think topics like this really need to set some parameters in what “change” means. I could “change” the expansion by deleting it and doing it “right.” Or we can try and salvage and reform the current narrative keeping the main plots of the patches, but adding the much needed detail and nuance to it all.
I’ve said before this feels like an expansion that doesn’t know what to do with itself. It can easily be stretched into 3 different expansions; a faction war one, an Azshara one, and a N’zoth one. Maybe not in that order, probably Azshara + Azerite/fixing the world, into faction war once the core of the world is stabilized and Azshara’s incursions to Black Empire restoration.
We stabilize our world, Azshara and her efforts to estore her empire are defeated, then a faction war for… reasons (it doesn’t particularly matter at this point but suffice it to say it would be more warranted than “We’ll have one eventually”) into madness seeping in to the armies at the end disobeying orders, full on suicidal attacks, pockets of overt corruption that starts to raise an eye on the 2nd or 3rd patch, but the primary focus is all faction war. It is at the big climatic raid of the expansion that we get a tease of real N’zoth and that starts to come out more in pre-patch and launch of the next expansion to defeat N’zoth at the climax.
Honestly, that would be my change to the expansion. Elongate it into three, before we even start discussing primary story changes.
(Commentary): The Night Elf story in BFA is something I would seek to change the most, though I would also like to see an internal storyline for the Horde involving the Forsaken growing increasingly disillusioned with Sylvanas, forming a new Desolate Council in secret.
(Edit): Attempts at resolving formatting error have failed. Discontinuing attempts. Apologies for unpleasant left column.
| Night Elf | Changes |
|---|---|
| Home | The Night Elves should have had a phased version of either Moonglade or Hyjal using the new assets we saw put into effect during Legion, in Val’sharah. Something small, but visually impressive enough for the loss of Teldrassil to seem acceptable purely on an aesthetics level. |
| Highborne | The relevance of the Highborne within Night Elf society should’ve completely sky-rocketed after their sacrifices during the evacuation of Teldrassil. Access to the Well of Eternity, a dedicated atheneum within their new city, and a named organization, similar to the Sentinels/Wardens. |
| Wardens | The Wardens should have a new prison in this new settlement, with prisoners of the war located below being interrogated. NPCs could’ve had dialogue such as, “This Orc was one of those operating the catapults which burned Teldrassil.” |
| Sisterhood | The Sisterhood of Elune should’ve become a lot more militant. I think Tyrande’s story of the Night Warrior was the tiniest of steps towards this. I would prefer to have seen more Priestesses of the Moon taking this path as well. The Dark Moonwell being in a shadowy grove behind the new Temple would be a nice touch. |
| Society | Similar to how the Third War drastically changed the Blood Elves on a societal and cultural level, I think the same should be given to the Night Elves to give them a stronger degree of growth from this. A stronger emphasis on personal growth and strength, perhaps. |
| Philosophy | Tied into Society, a new philosophical paradigm among the Night Elves could have been a welcome addition. “Wildfires may devastate the forest, but burns away the rot and allows for new growth.” This premise would be adapted in honor of Teldrassil. On an introspective level it translates to the Night Elves seeking to grow greater than ever before. On an external level, it means utterly destroying their enemies so the remnants can grow into something better than they are now. |
Honestly,
I would just make the Alliance more harshly try to exert itself on the Horde. It did get regime change, but Anduin should have been harsher or pressured to be so much that the Alliance dominion is established. This makes the war meaningful, as the advertising promised.
IMPORTANT: This makes the war something mixed for the Horde to rally around as the cost of losing the war hurts.
- The armistice needs to include kicking the Horde out of Ashenvale and Darkshore. This constitutes a pretty severe territorial blow to the Horde of Kalimdor that will resent the Alliance for it.
- The Horde forsakes Lordaeron. This severe blow as a consequence of ousting Sylvanas causes anxiety for the Blood Elves (who have needed more reasons to prefer the Horde over the Alliance recently) and earns the Forsaken some pity.
Note these are not severe enough to force the Horde to resist but stern enough to satisfy the Alliance’s interests that the war had meaning and properly shows the Horde that they are victims of the Alliance, giving a underdog sort of pride again.
FORTUNATELY: This all can still be solidly established in this expansion. It can be in the novel, the groundwork is all there.
It’s the only neutral place with little Goblin influence(Goblin-run Zones like Tanaris can be passed off as Horde territories) aside from Uldum(Silithus has Night Elf towns taking away from the Neutrality)! Got to make the Alliance’s new leader cross a huge red line in my opinion!
Having the Night Elves go Super Saiyan and pushing the Horde back to the Barrens would be amazing. It seems like the only thing the Night Warrior ritual did was give Tyrande anger issues.
4 Likes
I would make it into what I believe their original plan was. I wrote a massive post on it a few days back, so I won’t copy/paste… well, all of that, here. But that original path when they first conceptualized the arcs we’ve since experienced would have been much more fleshed out and actually make a greater measure of sense.
2 Likes
Could you give us a link, at least? I’m curious.
It’s very long and a tinfoil hat manifested onto my head as I wrote it, but here you go.
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For Zandalar:
I would kick entire plot of blood trolls and G’huun away. Forcing titan facility on a land that was meant to be free from it was really messed up retcon to me. I also really dislike the a$spull trolls, who not only don’t contribute anything as a whole but are also extreme mockery of troll’s worst traits that were multiplied by 10 and needless excuse to shove in another “Heart of Darkness” reference.
I would rather use this Zone to explore Zandalari more! Have some rural places where we see them having farms, a proper Academy for scholars and chroniclers/arcanitals, with a raid that works kinda like caverns of Time where we revisit Aquir Wars, and some smaller instance with extra lore on trolls past.
I would also use this zone to emphasise the damage of Cataclysm and show how others used it as advantage to strike on Zandalari, so I’d use here a proper naga invasion, pirates and even Kul’Tirans who officially came for spoils and slaves.
Zuldazar would be mostly about politics, which would end with trial for Zul.
And with Vol’Dun it could be still about Sethrak invasion and betrayal of Jak’ra zet. But I would also like to properly explore Zandalari ruins to learn exactly what happened there.
There would be no BoD raid, and Rastakhan survives. Talanji gets a charge over golden fleet and they eventually go to naval wars. Rastakhan will deal with domestic stuff, while Talanji will be free to go to any place in the world.
But in exchange of that Zandalari will only aid the Horde when they will see benefit for it themselves. Which should Balance out Zandalari power with their disposition.
5 Likes
I want Jaina to remain bitter and vengeful so that the Alliance can have more exciting faction dynamics.
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deep breath
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So here’s the pitch:
Sylvanas and Saurfang carry out the War of Thorns as planned save for one crucial detail. Saurfang can’t bring himself to kill Malfurion who escapes with Tyrande. Sylvanas looks frustrated and conflicted about what to do next, but before she says anything, Teldrassil erupts into flames.
Undercity happens as planned, but by now horde players would know that the alliance are engaging in warfare over something the horde never did, which makes the ensuing conflict a tad more justified. You later learn to find out that Azshara coordinated the burning of Teldrassil with the help of N’zoth-corrupted kaldorei agents. The misunderstandings lead to actual war crimes on both sides and it snowballs into the final raid which is an assault on Stormwind. The final boss is Sylvanas if your character is horde and Anduin if your character is alliance. The fight kills off every lore character involved in Shadowlands and we all wake up there as part of Sylvie’s master stroke to kill us all so we can do whatever needs to be done there.
Other minor revisions I would make include Sylvanas NOT killing her own people in Before the Storm, the Sunreavers getting a bit of petty vengeance on Jaina and testing the limits of her plot armor, and Derek Proudmoore being successfully brainwashed and killing Katherine before his sister has to off him. Baine remains in prison until everyone dies in Stormwind and he has a subplot trying to get everyone back or working with the remaining lore characters to fight N’zoth or something idk.
1 Like
My previous answer remains unchanged.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/if-you-could-change-the-story-from-bfa-what-would-you-do-tell-me-your-story/442471/45?u=vespero-durotan
Instead of starting an Alliance v. Horde war and the factions going to Kul Tiras and Zandalar for allies, it should have been the other way around; Kul Tiras and Zandalar should have started fighting (you know, two naval powerhouses right next door to each other?) on their own, and the Alliance and Horde get sucked into it. First it’s a proxy war, then it’s a full-on one.
6 Likes
A lot of your ideas are interesting! But …
please, no more “sad Jaina.”
ITT, “Darnassus still burns and Night Elves still get genocided but now the Horde is COMPLETLY absolved of all wrong doing, still don’t have to face justice oh and none of their innocents get needlessly slaughtered”.
Man I hope Blizzard never writes another satisfactory storyline for the Horde again and they keep writing them as monstrous and unrelatable as possible/
Get rid of the war of thorns and the bombing of the undercity. They were big ‘shocking’ spectacles but ultimately not things I think blizzard really had plans to follow through on.
I would put more focus on Silithus itself.
Azerite starts appearing. The goblins get there first and claim it, start mining it.
The Alliance, not trusting the Horde to have something so volatile and destructive, starts undermining horde operations via SI 7 sabotage.
Horde, feeling that the Alliance is taking what’s theirs, and not trusting the Alliance after Genn’s attack on Sylvanas in Legion, sends in forces to defend their miners.
Alliance retaliates by sending in more forces. Tensions rise.
Then, something happens. Nobody’s really sure who did it, but both sides blame the other. The truth should remain cryptic and uncertain from the player perspective. Something set off the Azerite stockpiles they’d been fighting over. Obliteraing both sides in Silithus, maybe even the whole zone if Blizzard absolutely cannot make the expansion without destroying some pre existing settlements. You establish motivations for both sides to have potentially done it, but never, EVER, reveal who actually did it, leaving both sides to assume the other did.
Both sides blame the other and as Azerite starts popping up in more and more places, things explode into full on war. The Alliance not trusting the Horde with volatile superweapons after Garrosh and the Horde seeing the Alliance as trying to bully them into submission.
Both warfronts can still happen with the Horde invading Darkshore by sea and the night elves fighting them off, and the undead and humans fighting over Stromgarde some more.
Neither side is villain batted. It’s not a retread of MOP. You can still have Azshara/N’zoth plot in there maybe with N’zoth making things worse by tempting/influencing both sides but NOT going so far as to make him or Azshara responsible for starting the war. Have them just taking advantage of it.
5 Likes
personally, i’d have the order halls want nothing to do with the war, and the player following khadgar away to do figure out a way to heal the planet.
as we progress, we’d hear of the horde assault being stalled in ashenvale by the wild gods and malfurion, and it turning into a quagmire basically. teldrassil could still be destroyed, though i don’t think i’d have it burn. it’d be a naga attack due to a deal between sylvanas and azshara, though it wouldn’t be found out till later.
i’d also make it clear that not all of the artifacts were used in the draining of the sword. ulthalesh and the scepter of sargeras would have been enough to drain the power, and that’d have been the first part of the continued warlock order hall questline.
basically, bfa would have had order hall involvement all the way through, just like legion.
Scrap the faction war COMPLETELY, focus on the overarching plot with the Naga and lovecraftian Old God horror stuff revolving around N’zoth, keep the death innuendo(to hint Shadowlands), have Sylvanas step down as Warchief(and keep the throne vacant for the expansion), NOT kill off Rastakahn, bring back the MU Mag’har under Jorin Deadeye instead of the AU, build up new Horde characters from the CORE races(not the AR), ect.
There are a great MANY changes I would make to BfA.