A bit late to the discussion, but I think this is a big reason why a faction war plot either should be avoided or should really, really be focused on making sure each side feels good about what they got to do each patch.
There are lots and lots of people debating on here - but the human mind tends to remember the bad ones a lot easier than it remembers the good ones. And even the good ones might make a rude post or two in the heat of the moment, and now that’s what the people who disagree will remember most strongly about them.
So if the story is any bit slanted, if there’s the opportunity for the worst elements of a group to gloat (like a bunch of people I still remember from the prepatch, no matter how I try to focus on how they’re not representative) - then that is how that group will be seen by their opponents for a long time afterwards, whether it’s representative or not. (And it’s usually not.)
And then when the pendulum swings to the other side, then that side will complain or gloat or whatever, their opponents will get annoyed, and the cycle repeats.
That’s the real cycle that Blizzard has to break, but it’s a lot harder to affect real people’s behavior than it is to have Anduin benevolently forgive everyone while they all suddenly forget their grievances or go loot-pinata insane.
I would expect you to show a little courtesy for people regardless of their subjective opinions about a video game, but you do you.
Tyrande was referenced as an illustration for my point (that being that Blizzard sucks at writing consistent characters and are fully willing to write them however they want to service the Hype Machine), but…yeah. It sucks how her character’s been treated. I feel it echoes my frustrations regarding Sylvanas’s moments of Idiot Ball and cartoon evil. In other words, they’ve all suffered from insultingly OOC story moments written by a revolving gaggle of people, half of whom care about the character enough to explore what they might represent.
I wholeheartedly agree. For me, it helps to always keep in mind that we’re all players for the same game, and that should come first. I’m a Horde fan, sure, but the last thing I want is for Alliance fans to feel bad playing the game.
When did we start using lore discussions as a medium through which we can fling punishments and comeuppances at our fellow players just because they love different aspects of the game from us? I don’t really care about gnome lore, but I don’t want Gnomeregan to get bombed by the Forsaken or something! Why can’t we just root for everyone to have a good time and try to reconcile the conflicts in a way where everyone gets something good?
I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again, the BfA opening trailer was the best representation of how the faction war SHOULD have gone: fairly neutral moral standing, both side gets a cool glowy/screamy/badass moment that represents their factions, we smash some toy soldiers together, we go home.
Blizz could have literally just gone for that and we would have been gravy. Toss in some lore development, whatever. I don’t want complicated storylines, Blizzard clearly can’t handle them. I just want toy soldiers smacking together and explosion noises.
Theres opinions and theres being wrong, you are wrong about sylvanas, she isnt out of character but 100% in character, its not my fault you where too blind to see all the signs.
You just did, I am not trying to be mean, but I am tired of people who like sylvanas think there character is so special that sylvanas wasnt allowed to be evil cause she is the best and a fan favorite, if tyrande goes evil I am gonna be upset, but I am not gonna talk about how couldnt go this path, about how she is out of character to do so, cause its not, she could totally go down this path, I am not gonna be mad at blizzard for picking a path I dont like, but is possible.
Okay. For the sake of mutual understanding, let me repost an argument I wrote in a different thread which details why I personally believe Sylvanas’s character arc has been inconsistent. On top of that, I’ll explain why I believe her arc has been so reviled on so many levels, even by groups who are totally opposed to each other. I’m not mad about Sylvanas’s treatment purely because I’m a Sylvanas fan. I’m mad because I’m also a Horde fan, and a night elf fan, and the Horde have lost two iconic characters in one fell swoop to a needless repeat of MoP, and the night elves have lost a zone and have become an endangered species all through the course of a friggin’ pre-patch for reasons flimsier than my grandma’s homemade wallpaper.
I will most certainly be mad at Blizzard for picking a path I don’t like if they’ve picked a path that absolutely no one but maybe 2% of the fanbase likes. If they’re writing the story to pump players up and get us to buy more games, this ain’t the way to do it.
As I explained above, my complaint isn’t that Sylvanas is evil, it’s the motives and methods behind her evil. It’s evil which Blizzard refuses to give a purpose, because they’ve been biding their time for YEARS to make some stupid*** big reveal about how Sylvanas has been secretly doing all these naughty things for [insert whatever bad guy here].
I feel roughly the same way Star Wars fans feel about the new movies. I feel a lot of this could had been avoided if they had screened their core audience and that we’re here because those who shape the story thought they knew better (like George Lucas), so the damage is done and all the parts of what I like have begun to all fall off like leaves from a branch in the dead of autumn.
I’m really bummed out that the vast majority of my friends are gone, all of the content I used to enjoy doing has turned to (profanity) and I can’t enjoy myself anywhere other than Classic, because it hasn’t been destroyed by recent developments.
I don’t think a new expansion would undo the damage of what’s been done. Short of a hard retcon, the story will always be tainted by the BFA disaster train.
I mean we been here for a long time though lol. BfA is just the latest round. Cataclysm was bad. WOD made 0 sense. BfA just rouses more peoples anger because of the faction war subject people take entirely too seriously.
Cataclysm was eye-roll inducing and WOD was a fever dream, but none had such extreme ramifications to the way the world functions. There’s a lot that goes into a war. It’s not just orc grunt beat up human knight, there’s logistics, there’s morale and, most importantly, there’s politics, both in what decisions are made and the fallout that comes from each action.
BFA delivered the Horde narrative a deathblow in that what was the established Horde narrative just got annihilated for the sake of shock value.
We’ve been in the bad pool before, but comparatively speaking, we were in the shallow end. BFA is the deep end and we’ve never been at this point before. Hell, even red shirt guy, the guy who is the most supportive of WoW as a story and has bit quite a few bullets, had to weigh in just to add some sense of continuity.
I agree BfA has been possibly the worst… but I have to chime in to say I don’t think WoW has ever done this really and it’s unrealistic to expect them to. “Rule of cool soap opera” etc, not “realistic political/war drama”
I think it’s cool for people to expand on this as players with interpretations but an expectation for the writers to deliver this themselves is misplaced.
If Tolkein can do it and G.R.R.M (even though he just heavily copied our history) can do it, it’s not so far fetched to expect an AAA company with every asset they could ever want at their fingertips to consult historians on how war and politics works in the middle ages.
This is information that is vital to the guts of a war story. It reflects what a war is, not just dudeshooting with swords. There will be no satisfying payoff if all angles to the world a war affects are ignored.
What I am saying is WoW as a franchise, as a consumer product, just isn’t that type of thing and I would argue never has been. If someone thought we were gonna get a realistic moving war story from this game, then I think they built themselves up to be let down. It may be a AAA company with every asset available, but it would be pretty radically changing of the whole game at this point to move it from cartoonish super heroesque soap opera, filled with everything from fantasy to sci-fi aesthetics, to a gritty moving realistic developed tale about war.
Even when the story was more nuanced or whatever from wc3-classic, it never was what you are expecting it to be. I’d like the story to be better sure and I would not care if it took the direction you think it should but I’m just saying it’s silly to expect something never truly advertised (realistic socio-political war drama or w/e) and then be let down by that expectation.
In fact them being a AAA company doesn’t really give me much faith and possibly lowers my expectations in all departments other than the art teams. All it means to me is every story they write is more prepared and organized to fold entirely into the dominant hegemonic ideology of the globe even more frighteningly than other art/media. This is the same company that makes Call of Duty at this point.