It feels like it was made by GenAI and recycled from The War Within and more recent expansions. Just some similarities, mind you:
Crusty old veteran forced to crash out like a toddler; refuses aid
Younger member of the same order with far less experience uplifted as idealistic ‘new’ replacement for aforementioned crusty old veteran
Journey of self-discovery and self-worth for aforementioned younger member (Anduin, momentarily Faerin, Shandris, now Arator)
‘The truth’ vs. ‘your truth/character’s truth’, warring opinions that favor holding hands and no pushback and denies morality choice for self or any meaningful divergence.
Order-that-was-seen-as-good-against-former-evil-now-seen-as-evil trope (Order vs. choice/’identity’, Light vs. Void, Fel vs. Life, etc.)
Patriarchy leadership vs. matriarchy leadership with former being vilified/replaced/sacrificed for the latter (Lor’ethemar vs. Liadrin)
I could just be seeing things, but I’m getting the feeling that it’s all just being recycled to print out another expansion and shave off further what came before for the convenience of a modern narrative. And that’s not having seen or explored every inch yet, and yet I have a feeling I can summarize precisely what is to come without having experienced it all. If I want good storytelling, I’ll hop offline and read a book by J.R.R Tolkien, C.S. Lewis or Johnathan Flanagan. Apologies if this sours someone’s day, t’was not my intent.
I did Harandar last night as soon as I unlocked the campaign table. The haranir stuff feels like those posts where people ask ChatGPT/GenAI to create a new WoW race and it comes back with the most generic ideas that are similiar yet slightly different from existing stuff. We knew this already, but I held out a sliver of hope that doing it myself would add something and make it interesting. It didn’t. If anything it made it more obvious. When you get there and go through the trials and see their history it feels like they just took garbage that was discarded from other races in Chronicles and recycled it.
If it had just been a typical leveling zone then I think it was okay. Yet as a new playable race? It was really weak. It made me even more convinced that we didn’t need this race. They’re less interesting than many new NPC races we quest with. It’s just rehashed elf/troll/Azeroth history, nature themes, etc. It added nothing new to the game or story. The only noteworthy thing was the Lightbloom, which was less because of the haranir and more because of current events.
Outside of the artwork, it really feels like no passion went into this race and their story. I have to assume they had already sunk too much into it from Danuser and refused to back out, because it’s all so… uninspired. A shame they didn’t use all the time and resources they wasted on this to revamp Lordaeron/Gilneas, or add customizations to existing races. Really hope these guys are just totally forgotten about once their part in this expansion is over. Sadly they’re probably now flagged for a major role in any potential Teldrassil revamp which I am one day hoping for in the distant future.
Can’t speak to the rest of the story yet as that’s where I stopped last night. The intro and stuff in Quel’Danas/Silvermoon/Eversong up until you unlock the campaign table was… okay. It was a bit generic as far as WoW plots go but that’s how it usually is, and I thought it was okay. The main problem was everything was so brief. They send you to a bunch of places and half the time it feels like the second you get there and the plot begins, you’re already done and mounting up again to go somewhere else for something completely different. Maybe they’re trying to set stuff up for the max-level campaign, I’m not sure. To be fair I didn’t do any side quests, only the MSQ, so maybe they flesh it out a bit, but even as far as past MSQs goes this one developed really fast.
I’ve only done Eversong so far, I love revamped Silvermoon. However it felt like most of the quests were chores or errands. Like the number one issue aside from light and void in Eversong seems to be animals running off or animals abruptly invading a town. Which seems even more goofy since Blood Elf towns are only separated by nature by pavement, if they were 5 feet away on the grass it’d be fine.
But I’m not so sure how annoyed with this I should be because Isle of Dorn wasn’t crazy either, aside from the occasional Nerubian incursion there wasn’t much aside from helping people with chores or errands.
I did Zul’aman first and I don’t regret it at all. I said in another post, most of it’s all been extremely “meh” for me, but Zul’aman was amazing and beautiful. Granted, I am an Amani fan.
But listening to you talk about all your gripes about the Haranir being included as an Allied Race, and how clunky and weak it all was… Zul’Aman did the exact opposite for me, in regards to the Amani. I got emotional more than a few times. I spent time wandering around, doing some of the side quests because the whole zone is just great, to me.
It just leaves me a little bewildered that we got Haranir instead of Amani as an Allied Race. They knock it out of the park with Zul’aman, reinforce how awesome the Amani are. I mean, I just got lost in the culture for hours and it was extremely satisfying.
And instead of getting Amani as a playable race, (Sorry, Darkspear customizations don’t even remotely count,) we get this vapid and derivative nonsense that is the Haranir.
I’d laugh if that didn’t seem to be the entire theme of this expansion, so far. It’s nonsensical.
I could be wrong, but i want to remember that orignally the Haranir were going to be added in TWW and that got changed. WIth the build up of whats her name during the spider zone the intent was it was going to lead into that. but well guess not.
No, I think you’re absolutely right. They were likely to be included in TWW, as, probably, was Harandar, but got shuffled into Midnight since it became a trilogy.
I’m just whining, fresh off the heels of finishing Zul’aman, that we don’t have them (yet).
Honestly, a good question. I wonder how far the story beats are laid out. Even if one wanted to change an upcoming expansion’s story, I imagine it wouldn’t be by much. I would bet doing a full 180 on the overarching narrative would be hard unless it is in the conceptual stages. I wonder if what we are seeing now is some of the course correction they could do.
As an undead/elf main, I’m here to say Zul’aman is peak.
I had to drag myself through Eversong and actually stopped partway through and took a nap at some point because I didn’t care about it at all and was bored to death. Same with Arator’s questline, though that time I got up to make a sandwich. ZA had me hooked from start to finish.
Been, sayign that form start, they will be sued to make teldrasil be more iumportant and specialer and ancient then ever was
And that it now totallya lways has eben sucha beloved thign for BOTH factions and BOTH factions oh oh so deeply suffered from the rtee being gone
the loss of lfie?N never gonna be brought up (again)
which is/shoudl be the iomportant thing the major loss of life not a tree thats 20 soemtyhign years old and was corrutpmed/spreading corruption for like half its life
Its not A.I, the writers are just that bad and keep focusing on the same old, lame and bad tropes and plot points
This is their trend, they love this one. If its not that is male leader dies and female one assumes and she is obv much better and wiser than him
It happen in Zul’aman, all though they spared Zul’jan and it happened in harandar, but i dont know if they made orwena, or whatever that elf is named, leader yet
The current story and almost more glaringly the dialogue is the most atrocious written slop I’ve ever seen. Normally I can suffer through it to get to the gameplay which is actually fun but these quests make me embarrassed to play this game.
Pretty much. It will be impossible to handle it with any care when there’s only one storyline. It’s the same thing going on in Midnight with blood/high/void elves; everything resolved with a conversation or two, sanitized and smoothed edges. TBH it would be the perfect time to do a split storyline again, restoring Undercity and Teldrassil at the same by their own faction so each one can focus on their own things, but that’s unlikely.
Absolutely. The tree doesn’t matter. But at this point it would be a symbolic gameplay element to substitute for the story element of loss of life. A cutscene or two saying “we’re getting them out of the Maw and putting them in a tree” didn’t feel like it did much to heal the scars of BFA/SL. I think restoring and revamping the zones that were lost would, on a symbolic level that aligns with both story and gameplay. Which can work, as that’s something that they’ve done really well with new Silvermoon. There are some nice touches in the new zones like parks, memorials, and other flavor text, calling back to the Third War and honoring the fallen. There’s definitely a good vibe that rebuilding the city was not only necessary but symbolic of their people’s recovery. They really nailed it. Amirdrassil did not feel that way even though that was its whole purpose. Even Hyjal, which might make more sense as a new home given they already lived there 10k years, still wouldn’t work as well given we never experienced that in the game.
Look at that, the male elder turns out to be a villain, and the day is saved in Eversong woods by the female elder who decide to listen the young generation
wow. How Shocking.
Imma start doing some sort of bet in WoW storytelling because is so predictable that isnt even funny anymore.
I can even write better stories than what blizzard wrote. So can most others on the forums too. Writing is becoming a lost art in these modern games cause of these so called activists being hired instead of actually qualified writers. Many video games have lost their original creativity due to these modern practices along with trends. All is lost in this work of wow lore so it be. Demons destroy meanwhile goodness creates. Make sure that what is being written is good before publishing it into the game. Rewrite anything that is rough, unorganized, not original, and is not worth enjoying. Even if it’s multiple times. That step was missed in many many stories recently put into the game and we all can tell. Please consider this feedback even if it sounds weird inorder for wow to be beautiful again. Thank you.
Totally agree. It’s super thin, so obvious, and not as evocative as other expansions. Also, the accents of the trolls are distractingly bad at times. Usually wow main story voice acting and cut scenes are pretty great. Some of the troll accents are so bad I wanted to turn off the sound.
I haven’t started Midnight yet, so I’ll form my own proper opinion once I’ve actually played it.
The main reason I’m playing Resident Evil Requiem first is because its release overlaps with the early access launch of WoW Midnight. Since both come out on the same day, I had to decide which one to focus on. And honestly, I don’t regret that decision at all. Resident Evil 9 really feels like a masterpiece. It’s just that good. Capcom rarely disappoints me, if ever.
Midnight, on the other hand, is still a question mark for me. I haven’t played it yet, so I’ll see how it turns out. I just hope it’s good. Blizzard, unfortunately, doesn’t always give me the same confidence.
