If you are an alliance player or a blood elf player who just like to be a high elf, and if you like subverted plotpoints that contradict already established lore, retcons and windrunner oversode, then this is expasnion is for you.
If not, you are in for a bad time
Iâm going to say, even as an Alliance player, it is rough. Turalyon, while a leading figure in the Lightâs Vanguard, is also the regent of Sw and Midnight has made him look like a fool.
Whether Alliance, Horde, Amani, Light, etc. Midnight isnât doing any wonders for anyone. I think it is safe to say anything âOld Wowâ is facing subversion, retcons, and or being neutered.
This âWorld-Soul Sagaâ look more like a World Neutered Saga.
Azeroth gonna wake up wearing a cone?
Finished ZulâAman earlier tonight and indeed you were right, it was really good. Didnât totally blow me away as Iâm not big on Amani/trolls to begin with, but it was really solid. I enjoyed it. Probably couldâve done without the follower dungeon quest though.
Iâm working on Voidstorm now; just finished 2 of the 3 major questlines there. Itâs actually not bad. It feels a lot like Kâaresh 2.0, but feels a LOT better. As if Blizzard took another shot at it but learned from their previous mistakes. Ironically, I feel like Alleria and Arator, who are normally insufferable in their own previous questlines, feel a lot better in this one despite dealing with both of them at the same time. Especially with Lothraxion in the mix too. Alleria isnât a total idiot, and Arator isnât quite so whiny. Decimus is a fun character, and lots of good backstory on Salhadaar and the Ethereals. Only complaint is itâs already obvious theyâre setting up Lothraxionâs later villain arc. Curious to see how it pans out in the final questline, but so far Iâm liking it.
EDIT: As noted in the other thread⌠yeah Alleria and Arator in Voidstorm does make the whole situation with Arator and Turalyon feel much worse. But I wasnât really thinking about that while doing Voidstorm. Big picture⌠yeah itâs bad, though just because things are bad with Turalyon and Arator doesnât mean Iâd wish for them to be bad with Alleria and Arator too. I just wish the Turalyon stuff had been handled better in its own right. Either way, in a vacuum Iâve thought Voidstorm was decent so far.
Decimus is indeed a fun character. He is very much like Alarak in Legacy of the Void. Still an evil character, but willing to work with the heroes for his own self interest and desires. Basically, âour goals are aligned for nowâ. Ah mutual self interest. It is also nice that he isnât the only Domanaar that seems to be against or at the very least not interesting in Xalâataths goals. You got the two in the pvp area that would rather fight each other than get involved in Xalâataths schemes. To the point that they are willing to work together to fight back against one that is (hence the voidscar arena dungeon). Makes it a lot more believable that Decimus would turn on Xalâatath for his own ambitions.
Although it is weird that Alleria is willing to trust him after what Xalâatath pulled on Kâaresh. Time will tell if Lothraxions belief that Decimus will betray us after Xalâatath is dealt with will come true.
The Turalyon stuff just feels bad because they had to retroactively change his characterization in Tides of Darkness to try and make it work. In the novelization of WC2: Tides of Darkness he doesnât go into a full on wrath filled rage when Anduin Lothar died. He does the exact opposite. And yet when we do the Arator storyline, his own friends say, âyeah no, he was always a hot head that would go into a blind rage if you push him far enoughâ. Sure there is a moment like that back in Legion when Illidan killed Xeâra but I feel that stems from him being in a constant war against literal demons for 1000 twisting nether years. But he quickly calmed down.
Which makes it stupid that the story treats Lothraxion so badly when he has good reason to not trust Decimus.
They also ignored all Turalyonâs character development from Legion onwards.
That and seeing his commanding officer and guardian angel for a thousand years killed right in front of him.
As far as actually their âStory so Farâ goes (https://youtu.be/-2Y4_o4YhPg?si=UKtN9dSXY_5_snXZ) is decently spliced together. I can give credit where credit is due in cinematics and editing. Iâd even go one step further and said it was good and would potentially give you a decent idea where the last season of a TV show left off and could actually be quite compelling in that sense.
That is until you remember that this is Warcraft and none of this actually fits together in a way that would get anyone hyped, feel connected to the game, or understand whats going on. If you even look at the comments of that video, thats all there is. Theyâve lost so much of the plot that the teaser cinematic they put out looks like an entirely different IP, just with the same art style.
People praising the ZA campaign.. Are you mad ?!
First you get there and it feels im in one of those videos where they go to a poor village in Africa and get immediatly surrounded by the locals begging for food and moneyâŚ
But of course the trolls keep saying things like âgo away!â and âi need help, but not from youâ right before asking you to get boar meat, crab meat, take care of their children etc etc etc because they are dying of hunger and i dont know what else.. with they calling you âQui-Nheâ or however is spelled, which i have the feeling means âg r i n g oâ (word which the forum didnât let me post so i had to try and separate it) in amani or something..
Then of course you get to follow the great and awesome super special magical girl boss ZulâJarra, who of course is awesome and perfect from the very moment you meet her, and can not fail, and witness her arc where she goes from being the typical mary sue super special magical awesome girl boss, to become EVEN MORE super special magical awesome with the power of all 4 loas! Oh and of course, she gets to be buddy buddy with Liadrin, wink wink, nudge nudge. They literaly canât stop complimenting each otherâŚ
So yeah through the campaign she gets to be even more perfect and her brother, who btw introduces himself as âI am ZulâJan, brother of ZulâJarraâ because thats aparently his greatest achievement, get to become even more dumb and unlikeable.
Sidequest helping a kid to summon the Loa of Children and one with a troll that ends up cheating his trial were much better then the whole ZulâJarra campaignâŚ
I agree with literally every one of your points, and have observed the same things. The problem is that when you are critical of these things, people will call you crazy, a chud, or a sexist or some other sort of derogatory term.
None of these tropes are bad, per se, but they are getting done over and over again and their opposites are not happening. These modern writers coming into one of the most beloved Fantasy IPs ever created and changing everything it stood for is exactly what happened to Star Wars and itâs really sad.
I want to see heroes being heroes again. I want to see people making sacrifices in the name of duty and saving the world.
Instead, we are constantly demonizing old heroes, forgiving heinous warcrimes of villains so that they can be redeemed, and not sacrificing anything at all and just winning on naive idealism where everything works out exactly as planned because the new, younger character is always right.
Yes people are mad
They even said Zandalar campaign was worse, madness.
Imma do the sidequests on my troll later, but the main campaign was awfull
This isnât even thinly veiled racism, youâre just straight up being racist lol
Oh look, another low post alt
Yeah, this is a handful of people posting on alts
This is the character that bnet auto selected when I logged into the forums for the first time in years.
Why are you trying to look at my post history instead of responding to the content of my reply?
Iâm beginning to see a common âtrendâ amongst certain people here and Itâs probably telling as to why Blizzard just never interacts here.
it isnt all yes man all time so for blizz it be automaticly toxic and wrong anyway the forums
In what way? I didnât see this at all.
Whether thatâs true or not, what theyâre saying is right, so donât shoot the messenger.
I havent done the ZA sidequests yet, but I have finished the main storyline. My thoughts.
-Zulâjarra sucks. Zulâjan was more interesting with his distrust of the Loa. Whenever we see Troll stories its always âtrust de Loaâ or âits wrong to go against de Loaâ when really theyâre probably the most pathetic and useless deities in WoW. For this crime he will most likely die but a man can hope
-Liadrin fawning over the Amani feels vile, especially since they killed her family. Theres no hostility or development on her side , she just kneels and starts sucking from like minute 1.
-Zulâjinâs only crime was losing. Really, screw the Loa.
-It was a stereotypical âunite de tribes and appease de godsâ story, which weâve had before. Hell, the tribe stereotypes gave me deja vu for the Centaur in DF.
-The voice acting kind of sucked. So did the cutscenes
Overall it was mid.
I was deeply dissapointed how dirty they did Zulâjin. Before I did ZA campaign, I had been anticipating some background story, showing how Elves invaded Amani lands, drove them out and then exterminated most of troll population. How Zulâjin in his righteous anger fought tooth and nail the elves, how they captured and tortured him, cutting one of his eyes.
How greedy Horde and Alliance adventurers raided Zulaman and killed Zulâjin not for the greater justice, but for pure greed of treasures.
Instead we got this BS of Zulâjinâs pure villification i.e. he was just just bad, he went against Loa (which goes contrary to what I remember when doing Zulaman in TBC, where Zulâjin called on power of all major Loas).
When I started Zulaman campaign in midnight, I loved it at start, the defiant and somewhat crude Zulâjan quickly earned my sympathy ⌠but then he was quickly replaced with his Merry Sew sister Zulâjara and throughout the remaining campaign presented as reckless and stupid.
And that part with âZulâjin got involved with that evil Hexmaster Malacrass and that is badâ bla bla. Trolls have been using hex magic since eons ago.
Why Hex magic should instantly make a person evil, while Alliance & Horde have no problems with using fel / void / death magic, but trolls that are using hex magic are somehow instantly bad? Again just shows how ignorant writers are of the larger lore.
I did like half side quests in Zulaman, theyâre not masterpieces, but some of them are definitely higher narative quality than a main campaign.
On a positive side, the art / music of Zulaman is fantastic, I just canât understand how the same company can have such brilliant artists / musicians and such worthless writers.