All the guys do now is die, cry, or sit on the side or comedy.
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No, they don’t really bother explaining something that obviously doesn’t make sense. They are distantly related, and that’s it.
To be fair most of the time writing and development in games is heavily done under a manager, high up or some other source of direction so it’s not fair to blame the devs when they only do what it’s approve or told to put out. Maybe this story was pass through the inclusivity tool that was shown Blizz high ups use? (I’m joking in this last bit we really don’t know if that’s true)
I would recommend people (I recommended this to 2 of my irl friends who work in writing fantasy and developing game fantasy stuff and they love it, got inspired even like I did from watching it) who can and have access to it to look up:
Dota: Dragon Blood - to me the most balance story I ever seen animated in modern days, love EVERY character that was introduce, even hilariously enough the “Shop Keeper”. Why, because it reminded me of WoW characters all the way… Even Azshara and Sire Denathrius if she ever usurp Elune in their personal quest for power. What type of relationship between the Sun God and the Moon Goddess could have. Dracthyr as I would imagine them in battle, even what an Aspect Dragon role in the World could be in WoW even thought Dragons in Dota have very cool unique traits that separates them both visually, personal nature and in power unlike the more homonymous in their looks and traits of WoW Dragons IMO. I saw in that series so many WoW characters and what could their potential story could be… Well balance both male and female being just at their pick EPICNESS!
I know obviously a movie or a series being animated from a game is an entirely different thing… but man I took such INSPIRATION from that series and still do, when I re-watch it.
Other recommends for balance leads, stories who really got me inspired IMO:
Netflix Castelvania, Dragon Prince and Vox Machina all were unique in their own way and modern to nowadays but flowed naturally enriching the story really good.
Obviously this is just my opinion that I share with others… not expecting people to like these… but I just had to brought it up since we almost reaching 1k reapplies on this discussion of balancing the story lead character cast. However if you do watch it I hope its enjoy as much my friends and I did. 
IMO we’ll get back to ol wow, eventually. We can only hope.
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People sitting here pretending like they don’t intentionally replace or humiliate male legacy characters any chance they can are just hurting the game. Its not a conspiracy, just bitter people calling the shots, looking to replace what came before.
They DO NOT care whether the game is successful. It’s not their legacy, its just a paycheck and not even that good of one. We have seen this over and over again… Creatives hired for legacy IPs becoming bitter towards what came before, making radical changes and replacing iconic characters. Whether it’s for political reasons or just bad writing, most of the time only those working on it will know the truth of it.
All we can do it sit here and discuss it, but please, let’s not pretend it isn’t happening. Come together, identify the issues, agree to disagree on certain points, but don’t gaslight people by denying the obvious.
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I sadly have to agree, it’s certainly been well documented in many other IP’s.
The sad part is, Warcraft has cool female characters. I loved Jaina up until Cataclysm, and they’ve done a fantastic job bringing her character back, and Tyrande was a phenomenal character and LOVED her “Night Warrior” re-designed – in fact, her “Elune-touched form” or whatever in the Shadowlands cinematics looked incredible (it was just a shame they never let her actually do anything).
Sylvanas also had a ton of potential, but they ruined her in an attempt to show her as some kind of “mastermind playing 4D chess”.
But they undermine the series when they intentionally botch legacy characters. Shadowlands should have had us interacting with the likes of Orgrim Doomhammer and Anduin Lothar – why the hell was Draka one of our main characters?! I also would’ve liked seeing either Nazgrim or even Theresa (Thrall’s adoptive sister) becoming the new Arbiter, rather than whats-his-face.
I really worry for WoW’s future. The gaming industry is in a ROUGH spot right now, and it really feels like Blizzard needs a big win. I’m worried that TWW isn’t gonna be in, because I don’t know anyone who was actually excited about it. The whole “Cosmology” stuff was a complete whiff, and I’m worried if they’re going to course correct this “Worldsoul Saga” fast enough to get people hyped about WoW again.
For my part, I haven’t preordered the new expansion, and I think it’s the first one I haven’t. I honestly don’t know that I’ll even play it (although fortunately, I’m having a decent enough time in WoW Classic, so that’s still something).
Really, it just feels like there’s a very different sense of what the current devs think is “cool” or “exciting”, than the older devs or fans. Hopefully Chris Metzen is able to walk that line and get everyone pulling in the same direction, because the past few years, it just seems like there’s been nothing but friction between devs and players, because we seemingly want different things out of Warcraft.
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Anyone watch that Metzen interview? He talks at one point how their creative process has become a lot more “democratized.” He tries to put a positive spin on it.
But it’s pretty obvious this is a guy who stepped back in, only to find out he was being given very little control, and was expected to show support whenever the team “under” him had some preferred approach.
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I’ve actually been surprised there are some male lead moments at all than in dragonflight.
Khadghar fighting xal
Incident at the Meadery
And skitters is great
Oh yes and the machine speaker leader being pulled in like prince Ali ababwa.
I feel it’s at least a little more balance in representation and glad to see it.
I hadnt noticed. As long as it serves the story and all characters are well written who cares. The bigger question should be why were female leads nonexistent for so long that now that they exist its a big issue for some.
As a female myself i just want them to be organic. The be female. To be feminine. I dont want female characters written like men to show how great they are. At least not all of them. Women can be great in their own right. And i certainly dont want us erased or turned into bowls of fruit because Blizz couldnt keep its frat boy culture in check.
On that note can we have more skimpy armor yet or are we all still suffering because some of the Blizz boys didnt know how to behave?
heh yeah. That made me sad.
From Shadowlands and BFA:
Male Leaders:
Human: Anduin, faction leader. A wuss.
Trolls: Rexxar, a little kid troll.
Dwarves: Follows Anduin’s or whatever neutral faction comes around.
Blood Elves: Was and still is the butt of both Jaina and once Sylvana’s words.
Gnomes & Mechagnomes: Has a short haired butch girl who functions as the “sane” person of their faction. I noticed this straight out of the gate.
Worgen: Genn is a neutered dog that follows what Anduin or Jaina tells him.
Orcs: Currently have no leader.
Tauren: Baine is the definition of a beta buck (see what I did there). The Highmountain chieftain he’s hanging around with almost feels like she’s about to take over things.
Vulpera: They don’t have an official leader. In fact, the leader can be male or female based on which of the NPCs you like the most in the story.As for the combined leadership:
Void Elves: male
Night Elves: Tyrande runs the show. Malfurion is her “yes, dear”.
Pandaren: They have no leader. It’s whoever decides to show up at the meeting.
Exactly. It’s a story by committee. It’s going to be a very “safe” process. That rarely equals good art or fantasy.
If you’re not offending one group of people, you’re not entertaining the other.
Blizzard, like many large corporations, is choosing to entertain a very loud, (very small), voice. Why? It remains to be seen, but it’s not a profitable way to do things. I suppose there’s a hope that it will eventually pay off.
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do the females all have to be bat crap crazy and have long meaningful talks in hallways?
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Khadgar “fighting” Xal
- Xal’atath says she wants to use Dalaran’s power for nefarious plan
- dark heart does some nonsense
- Khadgar knows about the nonsense, goes to fight anyway
- Khadgar gets downed in 1 second (atiesh breaks like a twig, lmao)
- Is Xal’tath going to steal Khadgar and the citadel away with some teleport?
-
kills him and blows up the city
- also there’s an egregious footshot that is a complete tonal mismatch
Was this scene made out of spite? Xal’atath should be this hot, corrupting, fun, underhanded, opportunistic villain. This is like if Gul Dukat killed Quark in order to “raise the stakes”.
On top of this, Metzen has already said that Xal’atath will feature throughout the trilogy. So if you like Khadgar, you don’t get to avenge him, and if you like the hot elf, it’s basically a “sylvanas warbringers” situation, where it just makes her look like a huge explitive.
Was this just Danuser doing to Xal’atath what Afrasabi did to Sylvanas? Petty revenge from an outgoing writer because his favorite character isn’t in the story anymore?
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it’s not diverse, i want diversity!
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Diversity really just means subverting what’s already in place huh
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yeah lol, not surprised.
was restored tho
Little ironic that you’re playing a female toon? just saying 
All female leads and one armed people, etc etc. There’s no real issue with this if it’s written to just make a good narrative. But all I see is DEI checkboxes so they can get a good ESG score and more financing for the future.
Takes me out of the story because it wasn’t designed to be a good story with a good narrative, it was designed around DEI financing and it’s in your face at all times.
I’m tired of banks designing games. And so are a lot of other people.
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Because…“The message!”.
Destroy all the characters that we love and made the game good and replace them all. It would be cool if it was natural, but we all know that is not the case. It’s forced.
Sadly, some people think they need to help others THEY feel are not represented/lesser people when said party/people doesn’t want or need their support.
This is becoming a huge problem. People think this is a joke when this is really what is happening. They get a lot of money for checking those boxes and it’s why we’ve seen a recent surge of games like this. They want that money. Problem is those games aren’t selling. WoW is lucky it has an addictive fan base.
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