Well that and they gained a future demi-god who is a horde backer. Old boy is goin to be loa’d at some point. always nice to have one more demi-god on your side really.
Vol’jin while a crap loss (died to trash mobs) did get quite the promotion there as I see it.
I couldnt bring myself to raid 9.2 purely from Kel’Thuzad’s quotes i saw on the PTR.
Apparently serving the jailor all along, cool. But to back hand Arthas as merely a pawn the entire time undermined his entire character arc for me. You could see in WCIII that KT and Arthas really had a mentor/protégé type of relationship, you had these two undead monsters sharing a kindred comradery, that made him all the more special when the OG players killed him in vanilla and when we faced him again in wotlk.
To make KT basically laugh at Arthas like that hurt me so bad i couldn’t even bring myself to follow the story anymore, he was the one boss i was REALLY gearing up to go after in 9.2 and hearing his poorly written dialogue just crushed my soul man. Such Amateur writing…
Man it almost feels as though the current writers are straight up resentful of how good Morheime and Metzen’s world building was and they want to defacate all over it wherever they can.
It is rather poor.
I particularly miss the faction conflict which seems to have disappeared in a puff of smoke.
You forget about Denathrius and his 300 IQ master plan! He had the Nathrezim influence Sargeras way back when to create the Burning Legion and put the Warcraft universe prequels into action only to have them fail so that our heroes would end up here in the Shadowlands.
But in reality, he had a secret master plan, not to be confused with his regular master plan. Because he knew we would defeat him and shove him in a whiny sword, he had the Nathrezim waiting to rescue him so he could continue helping the Jailer with his master plan.
This is all part of his super secret master plan, which is so awesome and so amazing that not even the writing team knows what it is. To be continued in World of Warcraft 10.0!
Really? Because Zovaal has already replaced Denathrius with Progenitor-Denathrius with the only aid from the Nathrezim being from Mal’Ganis who is only here for revenge!
According to the Arthas Novel Mal’Ganis’s getting attacked by Arthas didn’t even lead to his demise so Mal’Ganis up to this point has never actually been killed in combat…
Mal’Ganis and Zovaal are linked to the Scourge scheme while the rest of the Nathrezim are tied to the Denathrius plot which continues later on.
Denathrius’s secret master plan’s first step was to escape to who knows where while Zovaal is busy with us. The next step is unknown as Mal’Ganis’s revenge scheme is not part of the plan.
Don’t forget…The Jailer is so far ahead that not even the WoW writing team know what he is doing!
I only just finished up the stabby mode anduin thing and I’m just wondering. Did the current writing team like, not play any of the previous expansions? I thought corruption or the general “Good guy bad but not really” was pretty old and tired in Cataclysm, I guess not?
I don’t really feel like the trope itself changes enough with fighting them, they die, and everyone is sad vs we fight them and they’re nice again instead of dead.
In purple crayon even.
I wholeheartedly agree.
This story might have been halfway decent had it been a different IP entirely, but they have fully butchered all preceding lore events, handled their characters in the worst ways, and just told an all round empty, soulless story.
No narrative build up, no warcraft, just “hey here’s a big death guy you guys need to go sort out for the sake of the universe” oh yeah and he’s bad for some reason.
Nuance? Like I said elsewhere, you crack me up dude hahaha. “Oh no jailer took the sigils, well better mcguffin some more out of thin air lel”
You can’t seriously say this story has nuance or is a well crafted narrative, lmao
Eh.
“Characters” have never been Blizzard’s strong suit. They never bother to develop characters in ways that make us care about them as people. They’re just tools to advance the overarching plot. And that overarching plot has been some over the top cosmic garbage since… well, forever, tbh.
It’s hard to care about things when they get to that scale and there’s not even characters in small scale stuff that we can latch on to.
It’s hard to say recent expansions have done anything more “wrong” than normal, because Warcraft’s story has always been this kind of garbage. But I’m definitely more tired of it by now than I was in 2010. I want something more grounded. And I know I won’t be getting that from Warcraft (barring a hamfisted attempt at more of the “Faction War” which is also idiotic), so I just can’t bring myself to care about anything story related in WoW at all.
I think Warcraft has a decent setting. Its background lore has set it up to be a good fantasy Universe to play in, and when they DO push some smaller scale stuff, its more enjoyable than when they push the “big bad” stories. But they always go for the big bad stories.
Quick question:
Is there anyone who experienced the original Darrowshire questline who thinks any of the major plotlines of any expansion felt better than that one vanilla side quest chain no one ever forced you to do?
Yep.
I also think things like the morbent fel Duskwood chain,or the defias brotherhood plotline were far better, more interesting plotlines than any of this cosmic disneyland garbage.
Yeah it amazes me that someone can write such a terrible story and still be in charge of the narrative. How has someone not come in and said, “Hey, there’s a good chunk of fans who like lore and so we take that into consideration when looking at our dwindling players and revenue. Your story has sucked and lost us a lot of money, time for you to be replaced or moved to a lower end position.” I mean… I’m sure there are reputable fantasy authors with original IP’s they can bring on board with their billions they well… maybe don’t have anymore but somewhat, to at least give solid advice on how to craft a great narrative.
It amazes me you can write this fanfiction and still make a more than likely six figure salary at Blizzard being the head of such a big IP in the story department. Makes me think all that matters is connections and who you were friends with and you pretty much become untouchable because anywhere else, as you said, you’d be let go real quick for screwing up so bad.
I suspect that many of them are not even “gamers” at least not RPG gamers.
Exactly the same reason why they thought a half-baked remaster full of gamebreaking bugs and broken promises, which was literally forced onto every single WC3 player whether they wanted it or not, completely obliterating the original game from (official) existence was a good tribute to WC3! Because money!
Really though, you just know this new “epic conclusion to the story started in Warcraft 3!” babble they’re spewing now is purely because of Endwalker concluding their big main storyline. Yeah, technically Blizz IS concluding the WC3 story… but only because they’ve hamfisted in the Jailer as the unseen mastermind behind both the Legion and the Scourge, a fact that wasn’t even hinted at until Shadowlands came out and explicitly told us that he was the mastermind.
Endwalker earned its epic conclusion to a long running story by actually having a long running story that had major story beats every expansion that were even hinted at multiple expansions in advance. WoW hasn’t earned that because the Jailer wasn’t even remotely hinted at in any way until they hamfisted him in in Shadowlands.
What plot?
This farce is at best phoned in and its intellectual nonsense that has no cognitive base nor bias.
The game’s literally being held together by handwavium Blizzard story duct tape!
Like going to Starbucks and Sephora and you know his favorite store is Hot Topic.
That’s okay, the McDonalds at the Mall isn’t that good. And Panera has way better breakfasts.
(giggles)
I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself because I agree - the story is atrocious.
What amazes me is how Danuser can claim it’s even remotely “quality” at all.
How does someone become so full of confirmation bias to think that this drivel we’re getting as the “story” right now is somehow prose or worth the time he didn’t take to write it?
This game is dying, and the utterly absent attempts to address the story and making it make sense just prove that Blizzard is finally showing its true colors.
I am ready to quit and not come back if the story keeps going this route.
I mean… Zovaal is Thanos done wrong, the story is Infinity War insultedly done as fan service, and the ideas of what’s going on are so shoved together and hamfisted that it’s obvious there’s no plan.
Blizzard’s “Vision” is whatever half baked attempt at work is that they come up with each expansion.
And they’re the ones that’re proving it with their current actions!
Something else I just noticed.
Anyone else get the “Story Cartoon Checklist” feel from most patches and expansions?
Big bad? Check?
Useless barely justifies the in game content story? Check?
Gameplay that’s fun yet carries no substantive weight that would stand the test of time? Check?
Are we not innovating to improve the game? Check?
They made it up on the fly, dont believe it was some master design from wc3 days. It isnt. They have a way out by throwing out bfa and shadowlands story. Using the sword as the story. I won’t reveal the plot because I won’t do the work for them. But its far better than what they do.
I don’t expect actual effort from Blizzard.
I expect just skating by and barely that effort from Blizzard.
And sadly, I’m yet to be disappointed on that second one.
Since October 2005.