Kind of makes one wonder what the point of questing as a horde player is, doesn’t it? 
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… To get a literal Villain Bat? 
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Makes me glad I stopped participating in the war of thorns event after the first day.
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That was a good call.
I am conflicted if the Hippogryph was worth it. I like the mount and I liked the heroic flavor text on the item but I wish I hadn’t had to do that quest line for it. I regret having ever done the quests (and I only did them on Ally-side) but I don’t really regret having the Hippogryph, if that makes any sense.
Poor Horde players. Getting handed a massive power fantasy as their pre-patch experience. So sad. Everyone knows another year, after nine already, of nothing but tragedy with 0 pay off is the true greatest experience.
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I actually liked the War of the Thorns, even the in-game event. Even knowing that not everyone could be saved and that a lot would die, I was proud that the Night Elves fought to the full extent they could to save as many as they could, and had as many of my alts as I could join them, even knowing Teldrassil would still burn.
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Horde didn’t really get to powerful. In-game they won by sneaking around and attacking people from behind them, not facing them head on, except for Sylvanas, who ended up kneeling in the dirt before Malfurion. And in A Good War the Horde lost more soldiers than the Night Elves lost fighters when the Horde had an eight to one advantage against Ashenvale’s civilians and the Horde almost lost if they hadn’t found someone who knew a smuggling route through Felwood.
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From what I understand they did have the option of forgoing stealth and taking the Astranaar guards head on, only to get chided for doing things sloppy by whats-his-name the belf rogue. Other than that I didn’t get much satisfaction out of being Sylvanas’s side monkey during that whole s***show.
The bigger power fantasy for me is saving Azeroth from old god scum.
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The problem is less the event than the way it wasn’t paid off.
Sitting here at the end of the x-pac looking at an incoming tentacle distraction, I have to ask myself “Was this worth it?” and that is not a situation that a entertainment company should be shooting for with the finale of a particular product.
I would have been happier avoiding 8.0 and 8.1, getting the x-pac at 8.2 and using the free boosts to 120 and going straight to Najaztar.
But that is hindsight taking in the entire (or almost entire, I think there is a cinematic left not datamined, but it is just N’Zoth stuff) X-pac as a whole.
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The problem is both. The Burning of Teldrassil should have never even been up for consideration. Full stop. Period. No ifs ands or buts. Whoever came up with it should lose their job.
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Its really weird to me just how much pride the writers seem to take in it? Do … they not understand that the Burning of Teldrassil was the single most hated story point I think we’ve ever had in WoW? That it shattered the NE racial fantasy, that had already been rather abused? That it sentenced the Horde to be shackled with an atrocity, no matter how much they try to shift the blame? That they ensured that neither side could ever truly gain a satisfying conclusion?
What a weird group of writers? I swear to god … they truly are the types to pull a Kerrigan with Sylvie; even though I think everyone but the Sylvie fanatic fans would like nothing more than to let Tyrande skewer the Banshee and her boy toy a thousand times over. Also, lets have Bwon come in and steal the crown she’s been coveting just for fun, just to make sure she dies a miserable, horrid failure. Then she can play around in the Maw for eternity like she deserves.
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I was not fond of 8.0 myself. I definitely did not feel like going to Kul’Tiras after the War of the Thorns. But I enjoyed 8.1 for the Darkshore content, though all of the Kul’Tiras/Zandalar war content was largely still skippable for me as well. 8.2 was fun gameplay wise, but Nazjatar felt like filler and Mechagon even more so. Even using a 120 boost, I just do the Darkshore content and then park my alt and wait for Shadowlands.
I’ll do 8.3 on my main here, but pretty much just to fill reputation bars. BfA definitely wasn’t worth it. Not sure if Shadowlands will be, either. I cannot actually recommend anyone look forward to Shadowlands if there’s not something that has already caught their eye about it already. But if there’s Night Elf content to be played there, I’ll check it out and see where it goes, even if it’s nowhere.
Again, they don’t care. Quite literally, they do not care. Their lead came out and said that they do not listen to negative feedback on story points, because it messes with their “flow” when creating stories.
“While it listens to fan feedback, when it comes to writing, the story team has a clear goal in mind and remains on course despite any complaints from players.”
“Specifically with World of Warcraft, our creative director Alex [Afrasiabi] said a wonderful thing. He said our story rooms are dojos. They’re sacred places. And we try to tell a story as best we can and to make our players as happy as we can. But we try not to let the negativity enter the dojo.
You’ve got to clear your mind, focus your mind and do good work. Do we listen to our players and our fans? Absolutely. But also we try not to let that distract us from our end goal of the expansion or the new patch. We have a plan. We are listening. But also those voices can get pretty loud out there."
~George Krstic - director of story and franchise development.
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Wow, that is some of the most nonsense echo-chamber cultivating crap I’ve ever seen. I’m not going to sit here and state that there aren’t some good small scale stories within BfA, because there are quite a few … but this sort of work “flow” is exactly the type to get you so stuck up your own butts as writers its nuts. Its fine to funnel some things out, but this?!
Also, now I really want to find that poor intern that was in charge of writing the Gobs this expansion; and thank them. Somehow, despite all the other grossness of this expansion, and this very self-indulgent writing environment … I got spoiled fairly well as a Gob fan. Kudo’s to you hapless intern, your lingering vestiges of passion and creativity were not squandered on me.
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There are good small scale stories; those tend to be Blizzard’s best, tbh.
It’s just the overarching crap that they blow.
And it’s fairly easy to see how it is that things get so screwed up in the first place.
They have a small cast of main characters, and they know they need x, y, and z to happen. With only a small cast though, they need to twist and bend those characters to meet the needs of x, y, and z. That’s how we get characters making decisions that go entirely against their previous development and nature.
That’s how we get BFA.
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I’m not even really talking about a foothold, I’m talking about a presence in Darkshore. We find out the night elves had none, even when they control Darkshore the only base they have is the one you set up in the warfront. We know Shandris wasn’t there helping them in Ashenvale or Darkshore and she was leading the forces to Silithus, same for Tyrande or Malfurion, we also know the 7th legion which is running the mission table is controlled by Anduin who isn’t helping the night elves either because he doesn’t think he can spare the resources.
The mission table implies the night elves have a presence in Darkshore and can report, execute orders and fight the horde there which we find is untrue and they were completely decimated before Tyrande got there. We find out Anduin wasn’t helping them either and Tyrande wanted to help them but got tired of not being able to and went to go there on her own. The mission tables at this point are just not supported by anything in the game, there isn’t even a single mission you can point to that is backed up by something else.
Symptomatic of too many writers attempting to handle the same story.
This factor is especially true when you compare the Horde PC experience with the Alliance PC experience. The Horde PC is just not privy to any of the atrocities in the Blood War outside of Teldrassil. We would have had no way of knowing Sylvie recruited the vestiges of the San’layn. We had no way of knowing about Brennadam, a scenario Blizz altered last minute from Quillboars to Horde. Hell, the only exposure we have with Belmont and Faranell in Darkshore is rescuing them from the Alliance … its a weird situation.
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You Night Elves are ridiculous.
With that kind of typical, persistent attitude I feel glad that I threw that lit cigarette at your tree house. Serves you right, self-entitled little savages! 
They don’t care if you liked it, they care if you talk about it.
It might be the single best engagement event they’ve had from a story standpoint because even people that don’t know anything about the lore of the game talk about it.
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The thing that interests me on Shadowlands in the leveling revamp. I was fully prepared to hate a level squish cause I didn’t think it would be anything other than moving 120 levels in X amount of time to 40-60 levels in X amount of time (with X being the same amount of time).
I did not foresee a leveling squish where entire expansions (including BFA) become skippable. Or that the garrison or Artifact Weapons become available at the intro of the new intro area.
This has me hoping the Artifact Weapon get changed into Heirloom weapons.
But yeah, Shadowlands itself, I haven’t been that drawn to.
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