Kevin Martens and Frank Kowalkowski Interview

Lore Story Forum
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  • Zappi boi wasn’t intended to be so popular and more interactions with him were added to the story of Saurfang because of that.

  • Dazar’alor was always intended to become a raid, including the decision to split the raid into different experiences for each faction.

  • There is a conscious effort to balance “bad” events for factions in WoW’s storytelling. Battle of Dazar’alor is the “response” to Burning of Teldrassil when it comes to the balance of power between the factions.

  • The racial ability swap during Battle of Dazar’alor is intended to give the players the proper feel on how it is to play the opposite faction.

  • Blizzard is always open to changes like the ability swap on Battle of Dazar’alor, as long as they make sense thematically, are feasible, and aren’t a hindrance to gameplay.

  • Devs would love to have more Warfronts. Kevin would want a Warfront in Drustvar, with Witches and Wicker creatures fighting. Frank would rather have one in Vol’dun, to give the Vulpera a reason to get them more involved with the

  • The Son of the Wolf comic is a possible future. There is a storyline that ends with that particular future. However, it is not necessarily the one that will come to fruition, as there are many other possibilities. Always ask Alex Afrasiabi that question when you can in a Q&A.

    • The future they mention is Senior Anduin talking with Velen about their final battle against the Shadow, meaning that, no matter how crazy the War in Battle for Azeroth or later expansions escalate, Anduin would survive until then.

    • The Son of the Wolf comic, together with many other pieces of content throughout Legion, hinted at this ultimate goal in the Warcraft Universe being the War between Light and Shadow.

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To balance bad story beats, they have the Horde become pure evil, and then be defeated in Dazar’alor.

Genius.

Thanks for posting btw, Dawn.

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So for the next step do the Horde invade Ironforge and the Dark Iron Dwarves summon fire elementals that flood it with lava making it uninhabitable ?

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What the hell is Undercity supposed to be, a Horde victory?

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Blizz logic:

To balance “Bad” things, Blizz made the Horde commit genocide so anything the Alliance responds with will be justified.

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I’m not sure how the racial ability swap is supposed to encourage or motivate players - either yours plays a big part in a fight (like Arcane Torrent for Zul adds), is just macro’d into your cd’s, or is a defensive utility you may very well not use. I highly doubt any Alliance are super stoked about cannibalize, and no one’s going to be happy to get stuck as a NiB with their bubble (though the mailbox is nice if you get it.) Oh, and lol @ pandaren in this scenario.

They’re also not really balancing events well when the “bad” Alliance event is them making sure not to kill any more civilians than absolutely necessary and Anduin still wags his finger anyway. Also, if that’s the response to Teldrassil, then what was Undercity? Is there a Horde counterpart to that in the works? Do we also get our own Night Warrior later or something?

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Yeah, seems more a way to ignore or “solve” imbalance issues and less a way of a way to give players a feel for the other faction.

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Here’s where I suspect the disconnect is. Their view is like this:

  1. Burning of Teldrassil happened. Major “bad thing” for the Alliance.

  2. Siege of Lordaeron is a break-even, maybe slightly for the Alliance, maybe not, but no real winners.

  3. Burning of Dazar’alor counteracts event 1, bringing things back to parity.

But we, the players, experienced something a little different:

  1. Burning of Teldrassil happened. This is still unquestionably a major dump on the Alliance, but the Horde begins to fracture over the bluntness of Sylvanas’ villainization.

  2. Siege of Lordaeron is a break-even as far as the military tally goes, but is still stuffed chock-full of ‘Horde tension’ themes, including Anduin’s “She’s blighting her own troops” and Saurfang’s decision to try and suicide by Alliance.

  3. Horde and Alliance players quest from 100 to 110 in the new zones. Alliance players experience themes of renewal, empowerment, reconciliation, and redemption, while Horde players experience decay, defeat, fracture and frustration.

  4. Horde and Alliance players partake in their respective War Campaigns. Alliance War Campaign has them strike at a number of Horde assets (even if some of them don’t exist for the Horde, the spymaster and the Golden Fleet are big ones). The Horde War Campaign is a muddled mess that involves raising a few undead and hunting for a corpse of questionable value, which is discarded at the end of the campaign (Valentine) and a random artifact which is given scant explanation (Tide Scepter).

  5. The Battle of Dazar’alor occurs. The Horde suffers a defeat here while the Alliance claims a victory, a fact noted by NPCs of both sides.

  6. The War Campaign continues in 8.1. The Horde’s efforts of the previous patch are almost entirely invalidated with the theft of the Tide Scepter, and all that remains is Derek Proudmoore’s corpse, which is used only to further Sylvanas villainization and Horde disunity themes. The Alliance opens up a new front of questionable value in Darkshore, and Tyrande gains a power-up of questionable value. The Horde raises Night Elves. Nobody seems particularly happy with the course of these events.

  7. Horde disunity continues with the Saurfang saga. Horde players are being asked to explicitly pick a side, cementing and canonizing the divide in the playerbase.

To conclude, they seem to be ONLY looking at the score in terms of major story event tallies, which is why they’ve concluded that Dazar’alor restores things to even. Players, however, have been experiencing the story not just through these major events, but through gameplay as well, which is why I think it is possible for them to both think that things are “even” while at the same time the Horde can feel like they’ve been kicked into the mud with 8.1.

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I must have missed the part in the datamine where the vast majority of the Zandalari average citizenry are killed, to the point Talanji laments how they’re now defunt as a race.

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It’s a little known fact that boats are citizens of Zandalar. One boat is worth roughly 100 trolls.

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That is an incredibly well written explanation for what is happening. I hope they are able to realize what you are saying, before this story becomes even worse.

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Silly Jack, Alliance violence is always wrong. Even following up a successful attack, according to Anduin.

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Not sure why the Alliance didn’t round up all the children while they were there and execute them all tbh. Who needs any semblance of borders in a fight. It must always be a FFA murder-hobo trail of bones kind of deal.

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Well, it makes sense of why Blizzard completely dropped the ball with how I wanted 8.1 to go down.

From the Horde player perspective, 8.0 was a brutal battering of our pride as we were beaten to death with the villain bat harder than ever before, and 8.1 was something we needed to salvage our own self-worth. But to Blizzard, 8.0 was a swath of Horde fist-pumping victory, and 8.1 needed to give parity to the beleaguered Alliance.

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I’ve been advocating for the Alliance to pull a smaller scale Teldrassil on a Horde town to motivate the Horde to fight, but I don’t play Horde anymore so I dunno how it would actually affect your sides player morale. Give the Horde a short quest where you gayer civilian volunteers in Orgrimmar afterwards, transform the war from supporting Sylvanas’ genocide to supporting the survival of the Horde’s people.

EDIT: Anyone know what’s up with Quotes?

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testing 1 2 3 (ten chars)

edit; any text you highlight should appear the option to quote

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I’ll have to remember this.

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I dunno. Personally I can’t think of any actual horde towns out there other than Bilgewater. They’re all just camps and outposts. And bombing Bilgewater would probably be an improvement.

But even if the alliance did something like that, I’d just feel like the horde had it coming because we started it. But my enthusiasm has been especially defeated over this expansion.

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also makes quoting multiple people easy since they appear in the same response box :slight_smile:

This. Horde fans need a reason to back the war before we can get invested. Blizz didn’t really sell Horde fans the reason for going to war in the first place. Most we got was an argument for it that was proven wrong in BtS before we ever got it. Without that, it’s “just deserts”.

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So burning the Night Elven capital and killing the majority of its citizens is now balanced out by attacking a non - horde entity? #blizzardbalance

I would LOVE if someone could explain to me how the Zandalari experience a FRACTION of what happened at Teldrassil.

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