There is no debate that buying gold CAN and DOES boost player power. It is the purpose of gold in the game. To buy things that make things easier for you (soft power) or give you more stats (hard powerl). Otherwise what is the purpose of acruing gold in the first place? Why have gold at all?
Maybe check your glass house before throwing stones.
Because Lord of the Rings is a fantasy (you know, that genre that Warcraft is) that is incredibly successful and stands in direct opposition of your views. I would’ve that that would be obvious
Ah yes the cinematic where Varian did the famously super macho Warcraft thing of…patting Vol’jin on the shoulder and saying “hey man we don’t have to fight anymore it’s cool”
You seem to be missing a key understanding here. It’s the emotion that drives the scene. It’s not the orcs riding into war that’s exciting, it’s the context behind it. The Horde and Alliance teaming up, the understanding that most of the people going in to fight are going to die, and how they accept that for the greater good. How the Forsaken’s betrayal is a massive blow to morale and intrigue in how even the Lich King himself has to flee
A story is not interesting because blood is spilled, it’s interesting because of the emotional drama surrounding that blood being spilled
And I quote, “Some of you fought against his tyranny, so I am willing to end this bloodshed. But know this. If your Horde fails to uphold honor as Garrosh did, we will end you.”
Sounds like a super macho threat to me.
Betrayal is almost always good for WarCraft. It sets up another conflict.
Sure it does out of context. In context, knowing the history between the two factions that led up to that very scene, it’s barely even a slap on the wrist
Even knowing the history.
They can’t very well just systemically handicap one faction in the game or dismantle it like Jaina wants. Story wise it makes way more sense to do so, but it’s not realistically something that can be in an interactive game. So we have the threat of another conflict, which eventually happens in BFA.
You’re absolutely right. But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the “manliness” or lack thereof of the cutscene itself, not the gameplay necessities that warranted its direction
It’s still a threat, and a pretty classic delivery at that.
Nobody thinks, “oh we’re gonna be bffs now”, after that cinematic. Nobody is thinking that the worst is over and we can just forget all those pesky war crimes, all is forgiven. No. They’re thinking that they will be even more vigilant and on the look out for any reason to kick some butt.
What you call a classic threat I call blowing hot air. And so did all of the rest of the Alliance back then, when we were promised our “fist-pumping moment” after spending the entire expansion and then some just being reactionary to the Horde
You’re not wrong about that. Alliance players were denied their first pumping moment compared to the Wrathgate. I stand by the fact that the scene was very WarCraft, but WoW had already jumped the shark by that point so I cannot defend any of the rest of the writing post WotLK. It has clearly been spotty at best, and just completely off the rails and whiny today.
So how do you reconcile their existence as far back as Warcraft 3?
Existence of what?
I’d pay a hundred dollars to blizz to have m+ in wotlk and so would thousands of others
Highly doubt it.
OMG I hate the functionality of this forum…
Pandaren. The Pandaren Brewmaster was a unit in Warcraft 3 and Chen Stormstout was a hero unit. They were cartoonish and goofy back then too, something you so adamantly deny
And don’t try the “they were just non-canon easter eggs” excuse either, there are literally Vanilla-era items and dialogue that reference Chen and the Brewmasters and their aid in founding Orgrimmar
They were an actual April fools joke on the Blizz website during the WC3 (and Kung Fu Panda) years and a single unit was added to the game in the Frozen Throne as a neutral hero in reference to that.
Just because there was one unit in an RTS, and they made obscure references to them in WoW doesn’t make them a good idea. Certainly not for a whole expansion or playable race, IMO. They were better off as a one off curiosity. Instead of Ogres, or Half-Ogres like Rexxar, we got the April fools joke race because the forums kept pointing out that the texture on Illidan’s glaives resembled a panda face.
Pfft, even calling it ahead of time they still try to play that card…
Warcraft 3 release date: July 3, 2002
The Frozen Throne release date: July 1, 2003
Kung Fu Panda 1 release date: June 6, 2008
Nevermind that Kung Fu Panda is a legitimately great movie and if anything actually were inspired by it, that would be a compliment
No, but their rich lore, beautifully designed continent, original (by WoW’s standards) story themes, and different and fun personality unlike any playable race that had come before does
Cope harder. They’ve been canon since their creation, you don’t get to pick and choose what suits your argument better
Agree. But none of that required them to be pandas. That’s the point.
None of which requires orcs to be orcs, humans to be humans, elves to be elves, gnomes to be gnomes…What point are you trying to make here?
You could make that argument if you go to the absolute extreme, yes. But Night Elves are already a departure from what one would classify as a classic elf, or even drow.
The point is that I would greatly prefer to restrict a new playable race to the visual theme and tone of the other races and the original grittier setting as a whole. Or even to races that had been introduced much earlier. If you wanted a half-man half-bear, the Furbolgs were introduced first. Why not them instead of pandas? Honestly, I don’t have much love for any anthropomorphic animal races as playable characters, and Tauren only gets to squeak by in my view by because of existing minotaur mythology.
We already had comic relief races with goblins and gnomes. Why did we need another one? I don’t know how anybody can takes pandas on a battlefield seriously. It’s basically immersion breaking for me.
The Mogu would have been a better option for a playable race (despite just looking like reskinned Draenei rigs).
Don’t even get me started on the Drakthyr. Just the ugliest things ever.
PS. Yes, Kung Fu Panda was a good movie, and people were still playing WC3 when it came out… but it was a Jack Black comedy, and that’s all I hear when I see Pandaren, not any of the lore from MoP, which came out in 2012.
Which, after hitting level 60, stops being Classic and is retail.